
f 




Class ZBX°t 17% 

BookJlSSlSLsS-^ 

Copyright 

C2BKIGHT SEPOSOk 



SLEEPING THROUGH 
THE SERMON 



SLEEPING THROUGH 
THE SERMON 



AND OTHER DISCOURSES 



BY 

ROBERT HUGH MORRIS, D.D. 

PaBtor Central North Broad Street 
Presbyterian Church, 
Philadelphia 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, I916, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 





DEC 30 1916 

New York: i$3 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 17 N. Wabash Ave. 
Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 





©CLA453490 



The Memory of My Mother, 

Whose Life 
Was a More Eloquent Sermon 
Than Has Been Put in Words 
by Any Other Than 
Her Blessed Lord 



May He Who Uses 
Imperfect Agents and Means 
Use These Pages 
And Make Them 
A Blessing to All Who Read. 

R. H. M. 



CONTENTS 



I. Sleeping Through the Sermon. Acts XX: 9 . n 
II. The Spiral Road. Deut. XVII : 16 . . .24 

III. Wounded in the Sword Arm. Luke VI : 6 . . 34 

IV. The Divine Urge. Gen. Ill: 23 . . . . 44 
V. Peter Bound. Acts XII : 6 58 

VI. A Magnificent Failure. II Chron. IX : 31 . 67 
VII. The Sadness of a King. Ps. XLII:3; I Sam. 

XVI: 14 80 

VIII. Lest I too Be a Castaway. I Cor. IX : 27 ; I Cor. 

X : 12 . . 91 

IX. The Raven and the Dove. Gen. VIII : 6-7-8 . 102 

X. Sacrifices Which Cost Nothing. II. Sam. 

XXIV: 14 no 

XI. The Lame Prince of the House of Saul. 

II Sam. IX : 3 126 

XII. Streams in the Desert. Isa. XXXV: 6 . . 137 

XIII. The Many-Sided Jesus. Matt. XVI : 14 . 146 

XIV. The Glory of the Cross. Gal. VI : 14 . . .158 

XV. The Preestablished Harmony Between Jesus 

and Youth. Prov. VIII : 17 170 

9 



I 



SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 

"And there sat in a window a certain young man named 
Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was 
long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down 
from the third loft, and was taken up dead." — Acts 20 : 9. 

THIS accident happened in the city of Troas. 
The Apostle was on his return journey 
from a European missionary tour, usually 
referred to as his Third Missionary Journey. He 
had remained in Greece some three months, and 
a notable company of Christians had preceded him 
on his return trip and waited for him at Troas. In 
the number were Sopater of Berea, Aristarchus 
and Secundus of Thessalonica, Gaius of Derbe, 
Timothy, Tychicus and Trophimus of Asia. It 
was small wonder therefore that a congregation 
was easily secured for Paul on his arrival in Troas, 
and that though he remained there but seven days, 
one of those days, namely the first of the week, 
which is our Christian Sunday, was occupied by him 
in conducting religious worship. The record is that 
it was " upon the first day of the week when the 
disciples came together to break bread. Paul 

11 



12 SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON. 

preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, 
and continued his speech until midnight." It was 
during this long, and no doubt interesting, discourse 
by the eloquent Apostle that a young man, sitting in 
an open window, was borne down with sleep and 
fell backward from the window upon the pavement 
below and was taken up dead. 

We read further that Paul interrupted himself in 
the sermon, went down and fell on the young man 
and, embracing him, said, " Trouble not yourselves, 
for his life is in him. When he therefore was 
come up again and had broken bread and eaten and 
talked a long while, even till break of day, soon he 
departed. And they brought the young man alive 
and were not a little comforted." 

So far as I know this is the beginning of holding 
preaching services on the first day of the week, 
called in Christian lands the Lord's Day. It is 
interesting, also, in passing, that this first observance 
of the Lord's Day as a time for preaching the 
gospel happened in ancient Troas, a city somewhat 
in eclipse even in Paul's time, and now practically 
deserted, but which was once the site of a marvel- 
ous and beautiful city, the scene of the famous 
Homeric Trojan wars. 

There is something suggestive of the first day 
of Pentecost and the scene in the Upper Chamber, 
when Peter preached and so many were converted 



SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 13 



to the Way, in this account of the services held in 
the third loft of a house in ancient Troas. Though 
not directly involved in the message which we wish 
to present, it is, none the less, suggestive to us that 
record is made concerning " many lights " in this 
upper chamber. Those who feel they cannot rightly 
worship in a properly lighted building, but must 
have the " dim religious light " streaming through 
stained glass windows, would do well to read this 
story and ponder this little statement, that in this 
room where Paul preached, " There were many 
lights." 

Another thought in passing, is that Paul was 
" long in preaching." Twice in the brief record it 
is pointed out that he continued his speech far 
beyond what might have been expected. Once the 
words are, " He continued his speech until mid- 
night," and again, " As Paul was long in preaching." 
So much is said concerning the length of sermons 
that we commend these phrases to those who be- 
lieve, as a certain famous University is said to 
believe, that no one is converted after the first 
twenty minutes. It was no twenty-minute, essence- 
of-rose-water, poetic essay, you may be sure, 
which Paul, the battle-scarred veteran of the Lord, 
was giving to the people in this upper chamber 
in Troas. It was, undoubtedly, strong meat, and 
not milk for babes. 



14 SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 

To the average preacher of to-day these first 
twelve verses of the Twentieth Chapter of Acts 
should be particularly encouraging, if for no other 
reason than because it is here recorded that, dur- 
ing the long and serious preaching of one of the 
world's greatest masters of the art, a man fell 
asleep. We all remember Mr. Beecher's witty re- 
mark, that his sexton was instructed, whenever 
anyone was sleeping during the preaching, to go up 
into the pulpit and wake Mr. Beecher. It is indeed 
a witty saying, and worthy of Mr. Beecher; but 
as a matter of fact, people did sleep while Mr. 
Beecher preached. Perhaps not every time, but 
one who was a member of his congregation a 
number of years said in my hearing that he had 
more than once seen people sleeping under Mr. 
Beecher's eloquence. This does not detract from 
the great pulpit orator's glory, or minimize his 
ability. Circumstances and conditions over which 
the speaker has no control may have rendered per- 
sons in his congregation so physically exhausted, or 
mentally, or morally exhausted, that they could not 
become interested in what was being said and after 
a time lost consciousness. Physical exhaustion, un- 
accustomed quietness and stillness, a superheated 
atmosphere, lack of oxygen, and plain dullness and 
stupidity may induce sleep under given conditions, 
and a greater than Beecher was not able to preach 



SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 15 

so thrillingly, so eloquently, so powerfully that 
Eutychus .did not fall asleep. 

There is a cheap jest which the humorous papers 
have used since humorous papers began, concerning 
the man who sleeps in the church and the dullness 
of the speaker at the sacred desk. It is a pity they 
are not a bit fairer and more just, for were they 
to observe carefully, and honestly to record their 
observations, they would be bound to say that some 
people sleep through comic opera, or even grand 
opera! I have even seen people sleeping, though 
I did not wonder so much at that, during the 
progress of a supposedly exciting wild western 
scene depicted on the cinema screen. May we not 
have done forever, those of us who have thought of 
it or had it brought to our minds in this way, with 
the cheap contempt poured upon the pulpit because, 
forsooth, now and then a tired or a dull or an un- 
oxygenated person drops off to sleep during the 
course of the sermon? I have heard many sermons 
in many churches of many denominations, and my 
unbiased opinion is that, as an average, they are 
intellectually, rhetorically, and spiritually superior 
to the average discourse of any other class or de- 
scription being delivered in our time. 

The implications, suggestions and applications of 
this story are worthy of our attention to-day. Paul 
was not the first, or the last, preacher or prophet 



16 SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 

to struggle against the exasperation of an audience 
which contained sleeping individuals, or which itself 
seemed, as a whole, unattentive and practically 
asleep to the message. With passionate earnestness 
the ancient prophets were always shouting, " Hear, 
O Israel; " and it is at least suggestive that one of 
them may have suffered from stolid indifference, 
from easy-going, smiling, waking-sleepfulness of an 
indifferent audience, which wrung from him the 
startling exclamation, " Woe to them that are at 
ease in Zion." 

Many whose eyes are open and who seem to 
listen are none the less to all intents and purposes 
asleep. They are busy with their own thoughts. 
They are too weary to follow the sermon. Their 
bodies are in the pews: their minds, their souls 
are in banks, factories, offices, anywhere, every- 
where where their business has led them. Or in a 
craving for the rest which their weary bodies are 
denied, they may repose by shining waters, under 
green trees; or may be watching the coming and 
going of the restless tides of the sea; or climbing 
the aspiring mountains, cooled with airs washed by 
the snows ; or they may be only at their homes, loll- 
ing in easy chairs or lying upon their beds. Ab- 
sorption in pleasure or absorption in business may 
have caused them to drive their own bodily machin- 
ery until it is exhausted and ready to fall, Or, 



SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 17 



slaves of a social system which demands of them 
long and tedious hours with unremunerative, in- 
adequate pay, they may have themselves been so 
driven by others that, in the first moment of relaxa- 
tion they lose control of their worn bodies and tired 
minds, and are unable to follow even the least subtle 
mental leadings of the minister. It is a picture of 
our day. I am certain it explains in a measure 
at least much of the inattention and indifference 
to the Gospel message. In their pleasure or in their 
business, some have driven themselves beyond the 
powers of endurance. They need to be reminded 
that Jesus could afford to take vacations from 
those three brief years of His public ministry, 
going aside to rest and recuperate, in order that 
He might have that soul power which would en- 
able Him to commune with His Father. They need 
to be reminded, too, that when He was, on one 
occasion, about to feed the tired multitude, His 
command was, " Make the men sit down." Those 
who are driving others beyond the power of human 
endurance would do well to remember the com- 
passion that Jesus had for the tired populace, and 
His great invitation that they should come unto 
Him when weary and heavy laden, and He would 
give them rest. 

A correlated thought is suggested here when we 
remember that there is a hue and cry all over our, 



18 SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 

land to-day that our Christian Sabbath be changed 
from a day devoted to sacred pursuits and attend- 
ance upon the services of the church, and be given 
over to sports and games, as might have been the 
case in the ancient pagan world. The specious argu- 
ment put forward is that for six days the poor must 
work within narrow walls, in dark rooms, in foul 
air, or under other trying and exhausting- condi- 
tions, and that on Sunday they should be given 
opportunity to do those things which their more 
fortunate brothers and sisters may engage in during 
the week. 

It sounds well, and if we do not think care- 
fully and closely, we may not detect the error 
in the logic involved. But we can at least suspect 
the logic, because those who put forward such argu- 
ments are open to suspicion as to their motives in 
the case. Thus a loud hue and cry comes from 
those who would have the baseball parks open on 
Sunday: all other advocates of sports join in the 
cry. Thus, also, do the proprietors of beer gardens, 
dance halls and worse places contend that the poor 
should have the advantage of an open " lid " on 
Sunday. Is it not easily seen that the motive driv- 
ing these people is not that of wishing to help the 
poor? It is rather that of wishing to fatten their 
own pocket books. They care no more for the poor 
than you do — not half so much. They want only 



SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 19 

the money the misled laborer, or factory worker, or 
clerk in a department store would spend in their 
amusement halls, their ball parks, their beer gar- 
dens, their dance rooms on the Sabbath Day. No, 
the true answer is, " Give the man and the woman 
who works six days in the week wholesome sur- 
roundings for their labors, and adequate remunera- 
tion for their work, and such hours of employment 
as will enable them both to do the work and to 
maintain their health. The writer is no socialist, 
nor is he an agitator for social changes, but he 
cannot refrain from remarking that the Christian 
solution of the problem is as given above and not 
in turning over bodily the Christian Sabbath to 
those whose greed for gain makes them hypo- 
critically weep over the " wrongs of the poor 
laboring man." 

There are those who in church hear the sermon 
but do not heed. They hear words or phrases, but 
only with their physical ears. As our mothers used 
to say to us in childhood, their counsels went in 
one ear and out at the other. Paul was not the 
first, or the last, preacher to face an audience which 
gave him apparently respectful and earnest atten- 
tion, and which indeed did select the poetic phrases, 
the striking metaphors, the interesting stories, and 
by so doing imagined they were receiving and ap- 
„ propriating the message. If there is any eloquence, 



20 SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 

beauty, art, finish, to the sermon, there are not want- 
ing those sermon-tasters who will discover it, but 
it is a difficulty over which the heart of every 
preacher groans to make his real message enter the 
ears of the soul. Perhaps this is why Jesus so con- 
stantly emphasizes the thought, " He that hath ears 
to hear, let him hear." Indeed I sometimes think 
that Jesus felt His greatest miracle was not open- 
ing the eyes of the blind, raising the sick, strength- 
ening the paralytic, cleansing the lepers, or even 
raising the dead, but rather making the deaf to 
hear. 

People are sleeping through the Gospel message 
all over this land. Yea, in this city, and in this very 
church. They hear words but no message enters 
to the soul. Beauty, eloquence, power, these things, 
if they exist, in the sermon, are readily recognized 
and generally given due credit. But the message 
itself seems to have as truly passed over them as if 
they were the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. Preach- 
ing in a Pennsylvania town some ten years ago, I 
put my whole soul into the humble message, as I 
thought, of Paul's great words, " I am not ashamed 
of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salva- 
tion." After the services a well-dressed, but evi- 
idently illiterate woman shook my hand cordially 
and with a beaming smile condescendingly said to 
me, " Buddy, you just done fine." I dare say there 



SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 21 

is no sincere or earnest Gospel preacher who has 
not had the very soul within him smothered in sor- 
row that his message has been preached to the 
sleeping, when, after his most soul-struggling effort, 
some pompous brother has remarked to him, as 
though it were the last word in sermon criticism, 
" Doctor, that was a strong message to-day," or 
some well-meaning sister has sweetly simpered, 
" Pastor, that was the most beautiful sermon I 
ever heard." 

There are those who in a broader sense still 
are under the Gospel message, and yet do not 
hear it. Who can deny there is a message preached 
by every church building, every tolling bell, every 
tapering spire, every blanching tomb; by every noble 
appeal made through public print; by the thousand 
evangelical books and the ten thousand evangelical 
pamphlets that are scattered here, there and every- 
where ? Who can deny that even the history of our 
country itself is a Gospel message? And yet vast 
are the numbers who, on the next Sabbath Day, 
will feel no call of the message, let the bells peal 
ever so sweetly, let the choirs sing ever so beauti- 
fully, let the churches stand ever so nobly, let the 
preachers proclaim ever so eloquently. Thousands 
pass your church on the busy thoroughfare who are 
even unconscious that it is a church. Although 
the message in every stone of every sacred edi- 



22 SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 

fice ought to call so loudly as to wake the dead, 
they hear not, they heed not. Vast is the 
number who will act as if they lived in the Babylon 
of 1500 B.C. or the Rome of 500 B. C, who do not 
stir in their souls, whatever may be the message 
that God is burning into the very pages of their 
nation's history. Heedless throngs on every street, 
heedless multitudes in every park; bodies awake, 
but souls asleep. How to waken these slumberous 
souls, how to bring them back from the arms of 
this twin brother of death, how to fall upon the 
young man, as Paul did at Troas, and reawaken 
within him the conscience and the dream, — that 
is the problem of the church and the soul-burden 
of the prophet of the church in this our modern 
life. Oh, for apostolic power of hand and head, 
of voice and heart, to waken the world that is 
sleeping through the mightiest Gospel sermons ever 
preached, proclaimed from every sacred edifice, 
from every hospital for healing, from every page 
devoted Christians have written, and from the very 
stones that mark the last resting places of their 
dead! 

Oh, for apostolic power to waken a world 
which sleeps with the Bible in its hand but not in 
its heart, which is in danger each moment of fall- 
ing headlong through the outer darkness and down 
to the death where there is no apostle to bring them 



SLEEPING THROUGH THE SERMON 23 



back to light and life! Oh! thou who art asleep, 
who art already dead in trespasses and sins, a 
greater than Paul is here. " Awake, thou that 
sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall 
give thee light.'' 



THE SPIRAL ROAD 

" Ye shall henceforth return no more that way."— Deut. 
17: 16. 

ISRAEL is en-route from Egypt to Canaan. 
Many and grievous have been their sins, and 
grievous and many were their woes. The long 
journey is nearing its end. And now, "on this 
side Jordan " still, the land of promise yet unat- 
tained though near at hand, Moses addresses the 
people, and recounts their wanderings. He reminds 
them of their many blessings, as well as their losses 
and sorrows. He sums up the law. He counsels 
and warns, he cheers and encourages. He reminds 
them that the land before them is to be their posses- 
sion; and that, even should they choose a king, his 
royal command could not bring them back along this 
journey. He says that God Himself has forbidden 
their return. 

" Ye shall henceforth return no more that way." 
Bearing in mind these words of Moses, and 
thinking of ourselves as on a journey, let us to-day 
consider what is the nature of that journey, and 

24 



THE SPIRAL ROAD 25 



whither we are hastening. The text forbids us to 
think we shall ever return over this roadway of to- 
day. It warns us that we are pilgrims and so- 
journers, and can tarry but for a night. 

In the world's get-nowhere philosophy we are 
taught that life is a treadmill, a ceaseless grind; 
going ever, but never arriving ; that we are dust and 
to dust we shall return, and there's an end of it. 

In his essay on " Circles, ,, Emerson works out 
elaborately the thought that all things move in or- 
bits, returning invariably whence they started. He 
says, " The eye is the first circle; the horizon 
which it forms is the second, and throughout nature 
this primary figure is repeated without end." 

It would seem then that our little lives are con- 
fined to small orbits; that we gyrate around some 
power which holds us; and that, sooner or later, 
we come back to the very spot from which we 
started. Man begins as a child, and returns to sec- 
ond childhood. He springs from the dust, and goes 
back to the dust. Thus it is said he fulfills the 
little orbit or circle of his life. We are told that 
should a man start walking due westward, or due 
eastward, or northward, or southward, and continue 
in the same direction, he would, were there no seas 
to intercept, return to the very spot he had left. 
.Thus it is sought to prove that life is a circle. 

But this is not all. The New England sage goes 



26 



THE SPIRAL ROAD 



further with his get-nowhere philosophy. He says 
in another sentence " Our life is apprenticeship to 
the truth that around every circle another can be 
drawn. There is no end in nature, but every end is 
a beginning ; that there is always another dawn risen 
on midnoon, and under every deep a lower deep 
opens." This eloquent passage presents life as ex- 
tremely prescribed in its powers. We never arrive, 
yet we are ever moving. Nay, we have no object 
or end m view. Why should we ? Destined always 
to return to the selfsame spot, and circumscribed 
by greater and more powerful circles, it is equally 
impossible to leave our orbits or to reach any goal 
by following them. 

It is certainly a fascinating thought that around 
all little circuits and orbits, as space surrounds all 
suns and systems, the great Circle holds its own 
mighty sway. Yet we feel the circle theory of life 
is inadequate, misleading, incorrect. We shall, 
therefore, complete the figure used by the great es- 
sayist, or rather substitute another which we feel is 
at once more scientific in its accuracy and also more 
true in that which it seeks to illustrate. Our text 
states definitely that we pass this way no more. 
Another text tells us we do indeed arrive. Our 
pathway, it says, " shines more and more unto the 
perfect day." We reach a somewhere, and that 
somewhere is a perfect, an endless day. 



THE SPIRAL ROAD 



27 



We do not pass the same roadway, in the same 
direction, to the same end, in the same way, any 
two times. We are never coming back to the same 
conditions or even to the same place. You say " I 
return to my home every evening. I find that home 
just where I left it." Is it where you left it? It 
is a sober fact that it is thousands of miles from 
where it was when you left to come to this church 
to-day. The movement of the earth, on its axis 
and in its orbit, has changed its position tre- 
mendously and irrevocably. It is incorrect to say 
that the revolution of the earth brings it again to 
the same spot to-day at noon which it occupied 
yesterday at noon; for while the earth rotates on 
its axis, it is also revolving in its orbit. It is shoot- 
ing around the sun at a net rate of nineteen miles 
a second, or one and one half million miles a day. 
At noon to-day, your house, your city, your whole 
continent, your world are a million and a half miles 
from where you and they were yesterday. 

It is likewise incorrect to say that when the five 
hundred eighty- four million miles of the earth's 
orbit have been covered, our planet returns to the 
same spot. We are not to-day exactly where we 
were at noon one year ago to-day, for, while the 
earth has made its revolution, and has come back 
to its relative position with regard to the sun, that 
sun itself, with all its retinue of worlds and satel- 



28 



THE SPIRAL ROAD 



lites, has plunged forward through space at a tre- 
mendous, inconceivable, if not incalculable, rate of 
speed. 

Wherefore, it is a literal, scientific fact that we 
do not go over the same ground or in the old 
beaten track, or follow the circuit back to its begin- 
ning. Not once, from the time the world as a flam- 
ing fire-ball first bowled out into space to this pres- 
ent moment in this year of grace, has it ever oc- 
cupied the same position which it occupied a mo- 
ment before. Instead of moving in circles that are 
circumscribed by greater circles, the whole is one 
vast amazing system of spiral movements, upward 
or downward or outward, into the eternal solitary 
spaces controlled and governed by the Eternal God. 

This is true in the intellectual as it is in the 
physical world. The thoughts of to-day are not 
and cannot be the thoughts of to-morrow, for the 
thoughts of to-day contain also the impressions, 
the accretions, the cosmic star-dust of the world of 
infinite ideas, that have sifted down into our beings 
to-day. Intellectually, we shall return this way no 
more ; intellectually, God makes all things new. He 
may use old matter in making it new; He does 
use it; but none the less the old has passed away. 
The movements of the human intellect are progres- 
sive: not circular but spiral. 

We speak of time as though it were continuous : 



THE SPIRAL ROAD 29 



"the river of time." Not so! Each moment is 
as some golden grain of wheat dropped from the 
storehouses of eternity; and, once fallen, is never 
again to form a part of time. Other grains may 
in their turn come, until the great storehouses are 
exhausted and the last grain has fallen, but one 
after another they come; one after another they 
fall, disappear, pass away. 

These lives of ours are moving onward. We 
are not " statues chiseled from the marble of which 
gods are made." We are living souls, growing 
souls, mounted upon a planet which is moving cease- 
lessly. "Creatures of time?" Well, if so, of 
a time, which, though it may have beginning, 
shall have no end. We are not what we were 
a year ago any more than we are where we 
were. 

We are forced by this very nature of things to 
be forever moving, — not moving in little circles and 
coming back to the same spot, but moving in spirals. 
This spiral motion must for us be upward or down- 
ward. Let us look about us then on this day. Let 
us ask ourselves, " In what direction has our mo- 
tion been during the year that is past? Are we 
better men and women than we were a year ago, or 
are we worse ? " For I say again that we have not 
moved in a circle, we are not at the same place. 
Are we nearer God than we were a year ago, or 



30 



THE SPIRAL ROAD 



are we farther away? Again I repeat, we have not 
returned to the old place. 

There are practical thoughts we may bring for- 
ward to-day in connection with this proposition that 
we shall not return this way again: The past is 
irrevocably gone. We cannot rely upon it. We 
cannot live upon its food. We cannot rest upon 
its successes. We should not grow disconsolate 
over its losses. The past year is as truly now a 
matter of history as was a year when Napoleon 
was shaking the thrones of Europe, or a year when 
savages were burning the homes and scalping the 
settlers in the wilds of America, or a year when 
the scholars were working upon this venerable Eng- 
lish Bible ; or any other year in the past ages. Since 
it is thus irrevocably past, I repeat that we must 
not hope to live in it, or with it. Likewise the 
sermons to which we have listened in the past ; the 
passages in the Holy Scripture which we have read 
and dwelt upon; the prayers in which we have 
taken a part ; the work we have done in the mission- 
ary society ; or any other of the spiritual or religious 
exercises in which we have engaged in this past 
year, and which have been in one sense or another 
our spiritual food — these things will not strengthen 
us in the year which is before us, unless we con- 
tinue to partake of that which our souls need. 

Nor can we rely upon the success of the past. 



THE SPIRAL ROAD 



31 



One can never afford to feel that he has at- 
tained and that, therefore, he may rest upon his 
laurels. No one can say " my class in the Sunday 
School was a great success last year and, therefore, 
I can retire from the work henceforth." No one 
can say, " I helped to make the prayer meeting a 
success last year and now I can retire." No one can 
afford to say, " I helped to meet the expenses of 
this organization, and made its business a success 
during the past year, and, therefore, I can now re- 
tire." No man can act upon any such principle 
as this. In case one should, then inevitable defeat 
would follow, because if one will not go forward, 
he must go backward. Do you recall the humorous 
remark of the old negro, who was weary of people 
living in the past? He had heard enough about 
ancestral glories to suit his taste. He expressed 
his opinion in the homely but illuminating figure: 
" Whenever I hears folks braggin' 'bout deir an- 
cestors, I allers thinks de bes' part uv dat pertater 
patch am in de groun'." Homely as is the figure 
it certainly illustrates this great truth — that we must 
live our own lives and not the lives of those who 
have passed before. 

On the other hand we need never revive the mis- 
fortunes of the past or its mistakes, whether they 
are ours or someone's else. The only sane use 
we can make of these mistakes is to see to it that 



32 THE SPIRAL ROAD 



they do not occur again if they are our mistakes, or 
to see to it that we are willing to overlook them 
if they are the mistakes of others. The year is be- 
fore us. Of the past year it can be truly said 
" Thou crownest the year with thy goodness " ; and 
of the year before us, " It, too, will be in His hands." 
As fair a lily as ever grew on mountain slopes will 
grow there again. As sweet a rose as ever blushed 
in a garden will bloom again. As cloudless a morn- 
ing as ever rose over the world will rise again. As 
fine thoughts as ever came to us should come again. 
As great joys as have ever been granted should 
be regranted, and will be. 

We have a new year: that is the beginning of 
our blessings. A year ago we had a new year. 
God made it new and He filled it with new bless- 
ings, new experiences, new joys, new hopes and as- 
pirations. He will fill this one just as He filled 
the last, save that it will be with new blessings ; and 
He will crown it with loving-kindness and tender 
mercies. 

In this new year, let us remember we are not to 
pass the same way we passed a year ago. Hence 
let us not try to live upon the successes and joys 
which came then. Surely let us not revive, or en- 
deavor to revive, the sorrows and disappointments 
of the past. Each day, each hour, each moment 
of this new year is a precious gift to us from the 



\ 



THE SPIRAL ROAD 33 



hand of our Father. We can so accept and use 
these gifts that, when the new year has become 
the old, we shall have no cause to feel we have 
despised or wasted what has been given — hence 
shall not be forced to mourn over the irrevocable 
past. 

In this new year, let us be found climbing up- 
wards, as when one climbs the mountains — or 
rather as the stars roll forward to their definite 
though unknown goal, in their stately orbits. If 
our spiral is upward, Godward, let us not forget 
that this unretraceable track along which life flies is 
slowly bringing us from outer darkness to that per- 
fect day, wherein we shall reach our goal at the 
foot of "the great white throne." 



Ill 



WOUNDED IN THE SWORD ARM 

"There was a man whose right hand was withered."— 
Luke 6:6. 




HE poor fellow's power was limited. 

In former days, when railroads were less 



prosperous, and their rolling stock not so 
well kept up as to-day, it was no unusual thing to 
see a locomotive in the condition known to railroad 
men as " on one side." A cylinder-head had blown 
out, a piston-rod had broken, a side-rod had dropped 
off: the trainmen had plugged up the steam- 
chest and removed all the connecting parts. The 
locomotive was then put to " her job." " She " 
could draw a load, once started ; but she was power- 
less to start if her one good side had stopped on 
" dead center." Even when started, her power was 
limited. 

Although we are not so purely mechanical as a 
locomotive, and although the loss of one organ 
often quickens and strengthens others, still no one 
will assert that we are as well off with one hand as 
with two. We are limited, in some measure, de- 
spite higher skill in the other hand, 

34 



WOUNDED IN SWORD ARM 35 

The man of our text was one of those whose 
power is below normal. We are not told that he 
appealed to Jesus to be made whole, but we are told 
that Jesus healed him — making his withered hand 
as sound and well as the other. This was done 
despite the bigoted attitude of the scribes and 
Pharisees, who preferred the withered hand to a 
breach of the letter of the Law. 

Our Lord's miracles always had a parabolic sig- 
nificance. There were and are spiritual lessons to 
be drawn from this one of the healed hand. Any 
evil which fastens itself upon us, limits our powers 
precisely as the barnacles make a ship sail more 
slowly, or as a withered hand limits our output of 
high-class work. 

The Bible presents sin under so many different 
aspects that it is impossible for anyone to speak 
of it in all these aspects at one time. In the New 
Testament there are quite a few different words 
and phrases used for sin. Some of them are very 
interesting. One of them means sin as a habit, 
as a state of being; another, sin as a power; an- 
other, sin as a transgression or a trespass, that is 
to say, going where one is forbidden ; another means 
a fall, a declination, a coming-down ; another means 
iniquity, something that is inherently, disgustingly 
wrong. There is still another which means lawless- 
ness, and yet another which means blindness. 



36 WOUNDED IN SWORD ARM 

In addition to these words or phrases which, 
within themselves, contain the ideas of sin, we have 
it pictured for us in other forms and under various' 
guises. Sin is a leprosy, that is to say, something 
that is not only deadly to the one who has it, but 
highly contagious. Or, sin is a palsy, that is to 
say, something that not only points toward complete 
destruction of the body, but which also renders the 
life useless and miserable, even before death comes 
to relieve the sufferer. Our present view is, sin 
is limitation. The philosopher Leibnitz wrote * of 
sin as though it were mere limitation, merely not 
coming up to the fullness of our being. Now, this 
is one, but not the only view of sin. There is 
" transgression of the law of God " as well as 
"want of conformity unto " it. But we are con- 
cerned with the latter aspect. 

Here is a man whose hand is withered, " dried 
up." When our Saviour pronounced a curse on 
the fig tree it dried up. When He was describing 
the growth of seed which fell in shallow soil, He 
said that because it had no root, when the sun beat 
upon it, it withered. The man's hand was dried up 
like a withered leaf. Why? Because of lack of 
vital connection between the sources of physical 
life and the affected parts. In the case of the with- 
ered hand it may have been because of some ac- 
cident, or it may have been a condition that existed 



WOUNDED IN SWORD ARM 37 

from birth; or some disease may have begun in a 
small way and gradually increased until the hand 
had lost its form, had become a withered, ugly, dead 
thing. 

What keeps your hand in its present shape ? You 
answer me that particles of food for the decaying 
tissues are brought by the blood through the various 
arteries, and then disseminated into every minutest 
part of the hand by the capillary blood vessels. 
Now, if the supply of blood is cut off, the hand will 
wither and die. If the supply of blood is even 
limited, the hand will grow sickly. There may have 
been, as I say, a condition in this man's hand exist- 
ing from birth. The main artery in the arm or 
at the wrist may have been deformed, and sufficient 
blood could not pass through. Nature may have 
failed to supply the lesser arteries or have made 
them so small that sufficient blood could not pene- 
trate. The hand may have been crushed, or burned, 
or some disease may have attacked it, and little by 
little hardened or narrowed the arteries until the 
hand became a withered one. 

A well-grounded tradition asserts that the man 
whom Jesus thus healed was a stonemason. In this 
case, injury may have been sustained while plying 
his trade ; or it may well have been partial paralysis 
due to excesses and irregular living, which caused 
his trouble. In any case, he is now withered as to 



38 WOUNDED IN SWORD ARM 

his right hand, his best tool and instrument for 
working at his trade, and is in a pitiable condition. 

He cannot do as much work as the man with two 
hands. Not only is he incapable of doing as much 
work but he does not enjoy the avocations of life 
as another man whose hands are both whole would 
enjoy them. He is limited in his labors and he is 
limited in his pleasures. He can neither handle the 
tools of the workshop so well, nor can he handle 
the golf sticks, the tennis rackets, baseball bats, 
or other instruments or tools of sport. 

Precisely this same thing is true of sin. Sin 
is a limitation. It is a limitation that may have 
existed all our days. We all have such limitations. 
Practically everybody questions the " laws of hered- 
ity " and yet we cannot escape the belief that there 
is truth in them. The Decalogue says God visits 
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children three 
or four generations down ; and we know that there 
are predispositions in the human body to certain 
forms of evil. The man who has these predisposi- 
tions is in that sense a man with a withered hand, 
and both his usefulness and his pleasures are limited 
until he has been cured. 

Again, some form of sin may start early in life. 
He may have had no hereditary inclination in that 
direction, but he was started in it by some vicious 
or careless nurse or companion. Little by little the 



WOUNDED IN SWORD ARM 39 



habit grew upon him until it became a vigorous 
and formidable thing, and his whole life has been 
warped and crippled and limited by it. 

Or again, more or less frequently a man's life 
may be blasted, his usefulness withered, by some 
sudden calamitous sin. His previous career may 
have been on the whole a noble struggle against evil 
and vice, and suddenly some great temptation may 
have arisen into which he fell, and henceforth his 
usefulness was withered. 

Let us think of these things. If there is some- 
thing in our lives that makes for this limitation by 
sin, you and I should examine carefully to find 
where the trouble lies, and then we should go to the 
Physician for our healing, so that we shall no 
longer be limited in our usefulness, or our enjoy- 
ment. I say limited in our usefulness, for we all 
know that the better and truer a man is, the more 
useful he is. Who are the men we honor most, all 
other things being equal? Are they not the best, 
the most honest, the truest, the most just men? In 
fact, is it not often the case that the most honored 
man in your community is a man who is vitally in 
touch with the churches and with their work? 
Fancy to yourself such a man now, say an officer 
in some of our prominent churches. Let him have 
all the qualifications to fill his high office and to 
be a great help and a great source of comfort to 



40 WOUNDED IN SWORD ARM 

the community; if this man permits hereditary tend- 
encies to grow upon him day after day, — for in- 
stance, if he becomes miserly and grasping and 
greedy instead of merely thrifty and saving — his 
hand, his spiritual hand, is withering. 

It is not without significance that it was this 
man's right hand which was withered. The right 
hand is usually the more useful of the two. Hence 
this touch shows the special pitifulness and help- 
lessness of this poor fellow. In that day a man who 
lacked physical qualifications would suffer even 
more than he would to-day; for now he might en- 
gage in some other work where his withered hand 
would not be required for all his duties. Suppose 
the man of our story had not always been afflicted 
as at present. Suppose he had been trained to work 
with this hand, work of some skill; the Orientals 
do many beautiful and artistic things. But some 
disease attacked his arteries, and now the right hand 
hangs useless, like some dead limb broken from the 
main trunk of a tree, swinging there by a torn 
ligament or two, beaten and battered by every wind 
that blows. You say he is a pitiful object, the 
more so than if he had never been able to use 
the hand. 

Here is the point: Sin is sure to attack you in 
your most useful power. As it was this man's right 
hand that was affected, so also you will be struck 



WOUNDED IN SWORD ARM 



41 



in the power of greatest usefulness. Are you a 
teacher? Sin will rob you of your patience and 
gentleness, will make you less effective and less 
acceptable as a teacher. At the same time it will 
take away your influence and your standing in 
the community, so that people will not desire to 
have a man or woman like you to teach their chil- 
dren. It withers your right hand. 

Are you employed in a bank? It will whisper 
that you are dishonest. You are known to gamble. 
It will be noised abroad, " Does this man gamble 
with his own, or with other people's money ? " Sin 
attacks you there. The officers and directors of the 
bank no longer trust you. Your position is taken, 
away from you. It strikes you in your right hand. 

Are you the mother in a household ? Sin hardens 
your heart and fills your life with other than right 
and true things ; shuts you out from your husband's 
counsels; takes away your ability to guide and 
direct your children aright. It withers your right 
hand. 

It makes no difference what your sphere in life 
is, be you student, physician, bookkeeper, sales- 
man, clergyman, or be you engaged in any other 
kind of occupation, sin will cripple your right hand. 

Perhaps it is already crippling you. Perhaps 
that is the reason you are no more acceptable in 
your work than you are. Perhaps that is the reason 



42 WOUNDED IN SWORD ARM 

you do not rise in your business. Perhaps that is 
the reason the community gives you no higher social 
standing. Did you not see in the papers how an 
actress, who married an unlawfully divorced man 
of millions, is reported as saying that the castles and 
carriages, the footmen and flowers, and other costly 
things which her husband's money can buy for her, 
have not made her happy because the best people 
have not given her the social position she desired 
and expected as the wife of such a wealthy man. 
Perhaps, I say, your failure to rise, or your lack 
of progress in any direction, may be due to the fact 
that your right hand is w : thered by sin. 

This is true of your us efulne ss, and it is also 
true of your ^e njoyment. Perhaps you are not 
happy because sin has withered your right hand. 

In this story the man's hand is cured. There 
was a Great Physician who said to him " Stretch 
forth thy hand." The man's hand is stretched 
forth, and it becomes whole like the other. If sin 
has withered your spiritual right hand I name to 
you again the name of this Great Physician, who 
can cure it, make it sound and well, make it whole 
like unto the other. 

At one period of his life John B. Gough was 
genius in ruins. He was a bloated sot, staggering 
about the streets of his native town. Within him 
were the possibilities of becoming one of the great- 



WOUNDED IN SWORD ARM 43 



est platform orators of his age; but his right hand 
was withered. Nobody would care to listen to the 
orations of a drunken wretch. But one day he 
saw his hand was withered; he went to the Great 
Physician ; he prayed for his hand to be cured, and 
his right hand was made whole and became as strong 
as any man's. He entered into a new sphere of use- 
fulness and of enjoyment, and for many years he 
stood forth as the foremost advocate, in America or 
in the world, of a clean and a temperate life. The 
same thing may be true of you and me. We may 
not have sunk so low as John B. Gough. We 
may not have within us the native powers, or to 
use our metaphor, the skillful right hand he had. 
But we all have some powers, we all have some 
usefulness, and this usefulness is crippled by our 
sinful lives. Let us bring them to the Great Physi- 
cian and have them made strong and well so that 
we can use them for the glory of God and the good 
of our fellow men. 

" He said unto the man, Stretch forth thy hand. 
And he did so: and his hand was restored whole 
as the other." 



IV 



THE DIVINE URGE 

"Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the 
garden of Eden." — Gen. 3 : 23. 

IN science as well as in religion, it is unsafe to 
dogmatize. We may, however, use scientific 
theories by way of illustration. We may also 
borrow semi-scientific terms. Thus, we hear much 
to-day of the " cosmic urge." It is said that there is 
an energy, unknown and unknowable, behind every 
electron, every atom, every entity, yea in and be- 
hind every world and flaming sun and star, which 
will let nothing rest. Some scientists affirm that 
there is no such thing as absolute rest, that in what 
seems to us solidest steel or coldest marble every 
smallest particle is in motion. Behind the cosmos, 
there is this silent, irresistible, furious power which 
cannot be evaded, which cannot be appeased. It 
drives more relentlessly than the Egyptian task- 
masters who beat the Israelites to tales of brick 
without straw. This incessant fury, I fancy, is what 
we call the cosmic urge. 

We human beings can observe very little of what 
44 



THE DIVINE URGE 



45 



takes place in the realm of atoms and electrons. 
The smallest things we can observe carefully are 
germs and insects; and we see that the insect has 
scarce begun its little life, when it starts out along 
a very restless way. We see the bird, scarce out 
of the egg, begin its lifelong flight. We know the 
young lion is hardly whelped before he begins those 
prowlings through forest and desert, which shall 
cease only with his life. In each case the cosmic 
urge seems to be as powerful in the realm of the 
organic as in the realm of the inorganic. And even 
when the organic life is ended by what we call 
death, science comes forth to say that the cosmic 
urge does not cease, that every atom and every 
electron of what we call the firefly, the eagle, or 
the lion, that these smallest particles do not stop, 
but under changing conditions move on in orbits 
as sure, as definitely marked, perhaps, as that in 
which our planet rolls about the sun. 

Viewed as a physical organism, that is, as an 
animated aggregation of electrons, all this is true of 
man. He goes forth to his labors until the sun 
sets and the shadows fall. In common with the fire- 
fly and eagle and lion, he is, from the first feeble 
motions in his mother's womb, to the last flickering 
of his eyelids as they close in death, full of that 
restlessness, that uneasiness, that universal push, 
that cosmic urge, which says " Move on." 



46 THE DIVINE URGE 



Natural law does not fail to have an analogy in 
the spiritual world even here. This is evident when 
we look at ourselves not merely as organisms, but 
rather as spiritual beings, for we have not only the 
cosmic urge upon our physical bodies, yea, upon 
the very electrons which compose our bodies, but 
there is also a Divine urge, a God-made compul- 
sion on these spirits of ours, making them more 
restless than the bodies in which they have their 
temporary dwellings. As one of our poets has 
sung: 

"These hearts of ours, how wild, how wild! 
They are as hard to tame as an Indian child. 
Build them a bright and beautiful home — 
They will soon grow weary and want to roam." 

Whatever may have been the original intent of 
our Creator, whether His divine purpose was pri- 
marily that the race should remain forever in 
Edenic innocency and bliss, we know not. But 
we do know that innocency was destroyed, and that 
bliss was broken. We do know there came a day 
when the voice of God, when the Divine compulsion, 
pointed to the gates and uttered that command 
which man could not disobey — " Go forth." 

There are two ways of considering religious life, 
and there are corresponding groups who look upon 
spiritual life from these two different viewpoints. 
There are those who hold that our natures, spirit- 



THE DIVINE URGE 47 



ually, if not physically, are created for rest, for 
repose. To such, the religious life means enter- 
ing into a kind of " saints' rest." The figures in 
the Bible which represent God as a guardian, as a 
fortress, as a mighty rock, as one who spreads His 
wings and shelters from all harm those who trust 
in Him — these figures appeal to such as none of 
the more strenuous and warlike figures of the Bible 
do appeal. For they believe the end and aim of re- 
ligion is perfect safety, and therewith perfect re- 
pose and bliss. The phrase most often upon the 
lips of such is " Saved unto happiness " or " En- 
tering into* our rest." We do not say that these 
friends have an erroneous conception of religion, 
we simply say they have a one-sided conception; 
for religion, as it is taught us in the Old Testa- 
ment and in the New, is a matter of life ; and life is 
not rest but motion, not ease but endeavor, not 
stagnation, but persistent and determined effort. To 
use the figure which comes naturally along with 
our text: religion does not open again the gates 
of that Eden from which we have been driven. Not 
only were our early father and mother driven forth 
and prevented from returning, but none of their 
sons and daughters, so far as there is any record, 
has ever gone back ; and the cherubim and flaming 
sword guard as effectively and as irresistibly to-day 
as they did in the long ago. But, say some, is not 



48 



THE DIVINE URGE 



this contrary to the teaching of natural religion? 
Is it not true that in religion we enter again into an 
estate of bliss which makes for a happiness equal 
to that from which we were driven? We do not 
deny when it is put in this form. It may equal, 
or be greater even, than the happiness and bliss 
from which we had previously been shut out, but 
the point here is that we never go back. 

There is the Eden of babyhood, or early child- 
hood. Oftentimes when we are weary, when we 
are sad with the apparently heartless bufferings of 
the world, when men have been uncharitable and 
cruel towards us, we have sat down at the close 
of the day, and we have wished with all our hearts 
we might be transported back to the old home, to 
the old fireside, the old paternal roof, to those 
golden evenings when in our father's home we en- 
joyed the Eden of childhood, and we cry with the 
poet : 

ie Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight ; 
Make me a child again, just for tonight. 
Mother, come back from that echoless shore, 
Take me in your arms again, just as of yore. 
Over my cradle your loving watch keep, 
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep." 

But though we cry until our voice ascend above the 
roofs and spires of the city, and above the clouds 
of the night, yea until they are lost in the abysses 



THE DIVINE URGE 



49 



amongst the stars, that which we ask is impossible. 
Time does not turn backward in its flight, mother 
does not come from that echoless shore; and were 
she to come she could not take us, gray-haired 
women and bearded men, and rock us to sleep as 
she did in our babyhood. That Eden is closed 
and in the providence of God it is well that it is. 
We do not want to surrender any of our dignity, 
of our duty, of our responsibilities, if we are real 
men and women. We do not want, except in our 
most sentimental moments, to be babes once more. 
No; we have come out of that. It was an Eden and 
as we look back to it now, it is all haloed with 
rainbow glories, all bespangled with jewels of de- 
light, and all odorous with the heaviest of per- 
fumes: but it is an Eden for babes and little chil- 
dren, and not an Eden for men and women who 
have work to do in this work-a-day world. Reli- 
gion, dear friends is not repose; entrance into a 
godly life is not reentrance into a workless Eden, 
however rich its fruitage, however beautiful its 
bloom. Salvation is not slumbering, even though 
that slumber should be seraph guarded. 

No matter in what Eden we may rest for a time 
the Divine urge comes, and from that Eden we are 
sent forth. It may not be the Eden of babyhood, to 
which we longingly look back; it may be the Eden 
of youth with all its high ambitions, with all its 



50 



THE DIVINE URGE 



beliefs in the future, with its cloud-capped, airy, 
sacred castles, now long since shrunken into the clay 
hovels of reality. But neither is this the thing to 
which we return when we come into a religious 
life, nor any of the other Edens to which we look 
back to-day. 

The other way to look upon the religious life 
is that it is a call to service. The Divine urge is 
not the whip of a heartless being unwilling to let 
the poor miserable creature rest for an hour. The 
Divine urge is rather the compulsion of a wise 
and just Father who plans that we shall accomplish 
the most that is possible for ourselves, for our fel- 
lows, and for Him. It is said that amongst the 
ancient Carthaginians, political prisoners were 
sometimes condemned to a torturous death. It 
was not by nailing them to the cross, though that 
was known amongst the Punic peoples. It was not 
slow starvation. It was not the thumbscrew, nor 
the application of tiny fires, though all these were 
known and used; but the unfortunate wretch was 
condemned to be kept awake until he dropped, 
through sheer exhaustion, into death. Slaves were 
set to scourge him sufficiently to keep him awake. 
If ever he was seen to close his eyes, these slaves 
would do something to waken him. They were re- 
lieved by other slaves, as sentinels on duty. Let 
the poor creature be so wearied, so exhausted for 



THE DIVINE URGE 



51 



lack of sleep that he fell in a heap on the dungeon 
floor, strong arms lifted him and set him on his feet 
again, and he was punched and pinched and pounded 
and slapped and stung until he awoke. And long 
after his exhaustion was so great that he could not 
stand on his feet, the sad wretch was still not per- 
mitted to sleep. There was no peace, not one mo- 
ment, until the merciful relief of death. 

Now this is not the figure under which we must 
view the Divine compulsion. God is our Father, 
not our taskmaster, and the only way in which an 
illustration like the preceding can in any sense be 
applied to our Father's divine compulsion, is when 
we think that it is to keep us awake in order that 
we should not sleep the sleep of death. Branded 
into my memory is an incident which occurred in 
the place where my father lived when I was a child 
of nine years. A neighbor had been found under 
the influence of morphine. By mistake he had taken 
a very large dose of the drug. When I heard of 
it, though I knew nothing of the meaning of the 
terms, childish curiosity sent me, with the other 
boys, to the neighbor's house; and standing around 
the fence of the back yard I watched the physicians, 
the man's sons and his daughter, and his wife, 
cruelly beat this man and dash cold water on him, 
walk him up and down, when he seemed so sick and 
weak that the merciful thing would be to put him 



52 



THE DIVINE URGE 



into bed and let him rest. But there was im- 
pressed forcefully upon me at that time the knowl- 
edge that if this man had been allowed to sleep it 
would have been to let him die. There are times 
when stillness will mean sleep and sleep will mean 
death. Now stagnation in religious life means 
spiritual sleep and spiritual death. There is always 
the kindness and mercy of God behind this Divine 
compulsion which drives us forth from the Eden 
of rest. 

Look how God has called the great prophets, the 
mighty spiritual leaders, and said to them, " Come 
out ! Come out of your Eden. Come out of your 
ark, your ease, your bliss, your rest. Come out and 
go where I will show you." The Divine reveille has 
sounded and it calls as some trumpet on the last 
day. It cries to everyone " Lo ! it is the dawn ! Go 
forth, O man, to your labor until the evening/' 
Thus spoke God, when with an irresistible, but gentle 
touch, He pushed forth the man and his wife from 
the Garden. Thus spake He when He called unto 
Noah resting in the ark, " Go forth from the ark." 
We read that after the confusion at Babel, lest men 
should content themselves with some earthly heaven, 
and with the cloud-capped towers they had con- 
structed, His divine compulsion came and " from 
thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the 
face of all the earth." We read again how His 



THE DIVINE URGE 



53 



voice came to one in a rich and populous country, 
to one of rich and powerful family, and " the Lord 
said unto Abram, Get thee out of this country and 
from thy kindred and from thy father's house, unto 
a land that I will show thee." We read how this 
same God called to one who for forty years had 
rested far from the madding crowd, in the desert 
of Midian. The world with its noise, its clamor 
of battle, and its bloodshed was in the distance, 
but that same God with His divine urge came, and 
in the burning bush Jehovah said unto Moses in 
Midian " Go ! " Again we read how when the army 
is encamped on the other side of the Jordan, the 
easy thing would have been to let it remain there 
encamped forever, but the voice of Jehovah comes 
to Joshua, " Arise, go," and the Divine compulsion 
drives him over the Jordan. " Go," says this same 
God unto Gideon, " Go, and save Israel." " Go," 
says He unto Saul ; " be thou a leader of my people." 
He says to David, " Go up and out of Bethlehem, 
and away from the sheepcotes of Jesse." Yea, to 
the mighty ones, to Zerubbabel, to Nehemiah, to 
Ezra, " Get out of Babylon. Go." The same 
message came to all the prophets of Israel. He said 
to Jeremiah, " Go and cry in the ears of Jerusa- 
lem." To Ezekiel He said, " Eat this roll, and go 
speak unto the house of Israel." To Hosea He 
said, " Go and bring my message to my people." 



54 



THE DIVINE URGE 



To Jonah, " Arise, go to Nineveh." It is always 
the divine command : " Forward march." 

Onward, upward, this is not your place. This 
Eden has served for to-day, it will not do for to- 
morrow. 

And when we open the New Testament we find 
therein no warranty for ease and idleness; we do 
not find a proclamation of stagnation; we do not 
find an assurance that we already have attained. 
We do not find a guarantee that we may fold our 
hands and sleep. In the New Testament, as well 
as in the Old, there is still the God compulsion, 
the Divine urge. But now it is in a different form. 
It is no longer " Go forth," but it is " Come hither." 
The keyword of the entire ancient Scriptures is 
" GO." The keyword of the New Testament is 
" COME." We have heard the " Go," let us now 
hear the " Come." The Divine compulsion no 
longer drives, but draws. It no longer pushes, it 
pulls. It no longer whips, it woos. And that is 
because Shiloh has come, and that One toward 
whom all had been propelled is here so that He 
can make the invitation " COME." He passes by 
the seashore and sees men in their boats fishing or 
mending their nets. " Leave your nets," says He ; 
" Come, follow me." He passes by the customs 
house and speaks to the taxgatherer, " Come, fol- 
low me." He meets the physician hurrying towards 



THE DIVINE URGE 



55 



his patients, and says " Turn your face from the 
sick, from the dying; follow me." He stretches out 
His hands over the weary multitude, " Come unto 
me," says He, " all ye that labour and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest." " Come," says He 
to the mothers, " bring your little children to me." 
" Come," says He to the rich young ruler, " yet lack- 
est thou one thing : sell all thou hast, . . . and come, 
follow me." This message is caught up and borne 
by all the apostles until in those last glowing pages 
of Holy Writ, we hear that last glowing, beautiful 
invitation, " The Spirit and the bride say, Come. 
And let him that heareth say, Come. . . . And 
whosoever will, let him take of the water of life 
freely." This Central Figure in all the world, to- 
ward whom God urged the prophets and patriarchs 
of ancient times, now draws us with a wooing that 
is irresistible. COME. The Divine compulsion 
which drove from the one side, now draws from 
the other. It is no longer Go, for even when the 
words of the great compulsion fell from His lips 
" Go ye, and preach the Gospel," He immediately 
makes it a " Come with me, and preach the Gospel " 
for He says, " Lo, I am with you alway." 

O souls, restless, weary, worn and sad, looking 
back to some Eden from which you have been 
driven, wherein you walked and talked and basked 
in the sunlight with someone you loved, have you 



56 THE DIVINE URGE 



not heard that irresistible, that all-wooing Voice, 
which said to you " Go forward " calling you also 
" Come unto me "? O you who look back and wring 
your hands and long to enter once more into some 
Eden whose high walls and flame-guarded gates 
forbid, hear you this : " In Christ shall all be made 
alive." " In Christ shall all be restored." 14 To- 
day," said He to the thief on the cross, and He 
alone could say it, " To-day shalt thou be with me 
in Paradise." Every Divine compulsion " Go 
forth " is to drive us from selfish or self-full con- 
tent, into a union with Him. When the mighty 
gates of Eden swung to, when God's voice rang in 
man's ear " Go forth," if he could only have heard 
with his spirit, and if he had only known the full 
meaning of the command, there would have been 
another word along with it ; not simply " Go forth 
to till the earth " but also " Go forth to find your 
Saviour." Abraham, Noah, Moses, Saul, David, 
Isaiah, all these saw but dimly and afar off, but all 
were divinely urged onward to the Christ. 

Wherefore, let us be brave, and let us be faith- 
ful. Let us hear again the GO as men might hear 
it, that we may also hear the COME as children 
hear the calling voice of mother as the twilight 
shadows fall. 

God drives you and me out from petty, man- 
made, earth- furnished Edens; and at the same time 



THE DIVINE URGE 



57 



woos and draws us through His compelling invita- 
tions that we may " leave the low-vaulted past," and 
may enter into more stately mansions ; yea that we 
may enter, through His Son, into eternal 
habitations. 

Come ; " and the Spirit and the bride say come. ,, 



V 



PETER BOUND 

"Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with 
two chains." — Acts 12 : 6. 

WHY was Peter sleeping between two 
soldiers, and bound with two chains ? The 
answer to this question is a statement of 
our theme. He was bound with chains because he 
had done good to men. Now that sounds like a 
right cynic's wail. We may be sure, however, that 
it is not cynicism. It is merely a statement of fact. 
The Apostle had cured ^Eneas of his paralysis. He 
had returned Dorcas to her friends, and sent her 
again on her mission of good works. He had had 
his vision in which a revelation had come that the 
Gospel was not to be confined to the Jews but was 
for all men, in that " God is no respecter of per- 
sons." He had preached a sermon, and his hearers, 
together with himself, had been baptized with the 
Holy Spirit. Following these things, Herod, the 
king, put forth his hand and killed James, the 
brother of John, and seized Peter and thrust him 
into prison. Hence, as we have said, it was literally 
for doing good that he was in chains. 

58 



PETER BOUND 



59 



If those that work evil are in power and author- 
ity, the deeds of a just man are so great a rebuke 
to them that they long to get him out of their way. 
He is an offense to their eyes. 

Thus it was with Peter. Thus it has been so 
often in human history that we may set it down as a 
rule. Were there some way to discover the facts of 
other worlds, perhaps we should find the same true 
there. Certain it is that when men pictured the ac- 
tions of imaginary demi-gods and gods, they fancied 
these beings as following this same moral law. For 
instance, in the story of Prometheus Bound. 

For no lack of Biblical illustration, but rather to 
use an acknowledgedly mythical story to illustrate 
how true to human nature are the facts in this in- 
cident of Peter's life, will you permit me to relate, 
and then refer freely to that classic myth? 

Prometheus was one of the Titans, that huge 
race of demi-gods who inhabited the earth before 
the coming of man. His brother Epimetheus was 
bestowing gifts upon all creatures: wings to the 
birds, a shell to the tortoise, fins to the fishes, and 
so on. Coming at last to man, his lavish generosity 
had left nothing to bestow upon humanity. He 
appealed to his brother, Prometheus, who filched fire 
from the altar of Jove and gave it to- man. This 
gift made man the world's sovereign. With fire he 
could warm his house and hence could live in all 



60 PETER BOUND 



climes; he could forge metal, and hence superior 
weapons were his with which to conquer animals. 
With fire he could work a thousand arts. Now 
when Jove heard this, his anger against Prome- 
theus was very great. He therefore commanded 
Vulcan, the smith of the gods, to take Prometheus 
and bind him with chains in some out-of-the-way 
place; and he sent a vulture to prey forever upon 
the Titan's vitals. Taking Strength and Force with 
him to carry out their lord's command, Vulcan 
dragged Prometheus to a storm-rent chasm far up 
the " rocky, unclomb heights " of Mount Caucasus 
in " the Scythian track, the desert without man." 
Here was Prometheus fastened, and here he suf- 
fered for his crime, which was nothing more than 
" his old trick of loving man." 

Notice now our bound Apostle, yonder in the 
dungeon ? It is a lonely, gloomy place. The soldiers 
are his keepers, his gaolers — not his friends. He 
is thrust off there alone. That seems to be our 
way of dealing with the great man whom we, the 
lesser ones, cannot comprehend: to confine him in 
some lonely dungeon, to drive him to some lonely 
desert. Peter's plight while thus bound may be il- 
lustrated further by reference to our ancient story. 

Where was Prometheus chained? In the loneli- 
est place the earth or the seas could afford. Moun- 
tain heights, through their very inaccessibility, have 



PETER BOUND 



61 



always been symbolic of loneliness, and there is a 
height to which even the screaming eagle does not 
fly. Mists, thunders, bald crags, and chilling snows 
are the only earthly objects in these far heights. It 
was to such a place, where even sympathy could 
scarce follow, that Strength and Force dragged the 
chained Titan, and there to some huge cloud-moist- 
ened boulder they fastened him. 

How like is this to Peter's loneliness ! How like 
to the loneliness of so many of earth's benefactors ! 
One might almost say that, in proportion to their 
selfless lives, the saints have trod the lonely ways. 
A selfish world does not understand the unselfish. 
Unselfishness rebukes selfishness. Unworldliness 
shames worldliness. Purity makes impurity blush. 
Small wonder then that the world hated those faith- 
ful Disciples of the Lord who went out in His 
name to preach good tidings and bear the gift of 
God to men. Small wonder that the world they 
went to bless forced them into the mountain fast- 
ness of loneliness, and finally thrust their worn 
bodies into the black abyss. That world beheaded 
James ; it crucified Peter ; it slew Paul with a sword, 
probably in the very shadow of the palace of 
Caesar; it ripped the martyrs limb from limb; it 
plucked out their eyes; it sawed them asunder; it 
burned them, to light orgies which made night 
hideous. 



62 



PETER BOUND 



Peter was there by high command. But it was 
physical power, not spiritual, which held him. And 
because the soul is not subject to bonds and chains, 
because stony towers and walls of beaten brass and 
airless dungeons cannot imprison the free spirit, 
Peter was sure to be set free. In fact he was not in 
prison nor in chains. It was only Peter's body 
that was bound — as it was not Bunyan's mind which 
was shut up in Bedford jail. To leap again from 
fact to fiction — but fiction true to facts — it was not 
Prometheus' higher self, his true self, which 
Strength and Force, brute powers, welded to the 
crags. For the poet Shelley represents Prometheus 
as saying he had no great desire to quit that bleak 
ravine, and that if they were to pity anyone, they 
must 

" Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, 
Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene, 
As light in the sun, throned." 

" How hard " exclaims the thoughtless observer, 
" how hard to understand why Peter lies in chains ! 
Why so good a man as James should be beheaded 
by so evil a man as Herod ! " Why could such a 
philosopher, such a poet, such a preacher, such a 
benefactor as St. Paul fall by the enmity of the 
slaves of Nero? Why should John Hus, Jerome 
of Prague, why should Ridley and Latimer die, 
and such evil powers as Pope John XXIII and King 



PETER BOUND 



63 



Henry VIII triumph over them? Why should so 
many of those who have toiled to lift man be mis- 
treated, beaten, starved, imprisoned, maligned? 
These are questions that the thoughtful will ask. 
Let us remember that these great and good men 
did not suffer so much as we sometimes think. 
It is the craven spirit which suffers. The brave 
spirit nerves the weakest body beyond the sense of 
pain. Let us further remember that all the physical 
forces of punishment and destruction the world has 
known are (mysterious as it may seem) acting 
under the permission of the Almighty. Let us bear 
in mind that these things are material enemies 
and to be overcome by them is a very different 
thing from being overcome by spiritual enemies. 
Jesus hungered, the physical enemy pained him, but 
the spiritual enemy did not triumph. 

Peter's body was set free by supernatural inter- 
position, because his body was needed in the further- 
ance of Christ's kingdom. But had it been true 
that his greatest usefulness to that kingdom de- 
manded his further incarceration, we feel sure he 
would have been the last to murmur. He could 
have gained release — he need not even have been 
in prison at all. He could have denied and for- 
sworn his faith, his hope, his love for and in Jesus, 
and his prison doors would have been opened. But 
he was true to his Lord, whether the chains were 



64 



PETER BOUND 



to drop off the next moment, or whether they were 
to be worn till the crack of doom swallowed them 
and him. 

What martyr could not have bought an ignoble 
release from torture's grasp, or death's, by the ig- 
nominious price of denying his faith? Even in 
our pagan myth, the hero was too noble to buy re- 
lease. The story is that he could have been free at 
any time by revealing a secret which he alone knew. 
But to do this would be to sell out to baser motives. 
He could not compromise his high worth by doing 
such a thing. He was suffering for a great deed, 
for blessing men, just as all martyrs have suffered 
for blessing men. The martyrs themselves, as we 
have said, could have sold out — could have bought 
their freedom by basely denying the things in which 
they believed, or by playing false to the Lord whom 
they loved. 

It is not only true of those ancient times when 
martyrs were led into the arena, and while listen- 
ing to the fierce roars of hungry wild beasts, and 
the fiercer and more unpitying jibes of a cruel popu- 
lace, were told that by renunciation they might 
escape their martyrdom ; it is also true in this pres- 
ent hour, that men may sell for temporary gratifica- 
tion, temporary pleasure, or even for a temporary 
whim, the principles for which they should die. You 
can sell out your honor, your honesty, your virtue, 



PETER BOUND 



65 



your charity, your faith. The world stands ready 
to buy them all. It has its hands full of gold, and 
of pleasures, and of ease, and of all other things 
which it can give. It says to you, " Come now, 
don't be a fool. These spiritual things are worth 
nothing. They are all imaginary. Let me have 
them, and take these real things in their stead." 
But the noble man, like Peter, like Paul, like all 
the martyrs, says " NO" The true man says : " Let 
me suffer, but let me keep my spiritual integrity. 
Let me weep, let me want, let me feel hunger and 
cold and privation, let me moulder in this prison, 
let me lie here on these bare rocks and feel the cold 
dews drop down my face ; let me hear the ceaseless 
clanking of these earthly chains; let this vulture 
of unrequited affection, of unappreciated love, of 
misunderstood motive gnaw at my heart ; but let me 
keep my character ; let me hold to those principles by 
which I live and by which I expect to die. Night 
may come up with its garniture of stars; the day 
may disperse with retricked beams the morning 
frost ; seasons may come and go ; storms may sweep 
from the higher peaks and engulf me round; but 
though chained with mortal chains, my spirit is free 
and shall be the slave of no evil powers, and sub- 
ject only to the laws of God." 

But Peter's chains fell away. His prison doors 
were opened wide. He went forth free in body as 



66 



PETER BOUND 



well as in spirit. Certainly we may be comforted 
by this and may feel and know that although we 
too may be chained like slaves, — to-morrow's dawn 
shall throw its light on free men — freed from sor- 
row, persecution and death. 



VI 



A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 

"And Solomon slept with his fathers, and he was buried 
in the city of David his father." — II Chron. 9 : 31. 

THUS closed the life of a great and famous 
king. 

The funeral orations probably included no 
words except of highest praise. Had there been 
daily papers in Jerusalem, the morning Tribune 
would have appeared with inverted column rules, 
and pictures of His Majesty taken from early child- 
hood up to the day of his death would have adorned 
every page. There would have been a symposium 
of eulogies from all the prominent citizens of Jeru- 
salem, and wireless messages from the Queen of 
Sheba, the King of Tyre, and all the other poten- 
tates of the time. There would also have been 
announcement that Rehoboam, son and heir of the 
late lamented sovereign had been proclaimed king 
in his stead. In the synagogues the Rabbis would 
probably have exhausted Oriental imagery in setting 
forth the virtues and the glories of King Solomon. 
Though our account of the effect made by Solo- 

67 



68 A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 

mon's death upon Jerusalem and Judea is modern 
in terminology, one need not doubt the truth of the 
picture in the main. Moreover, during the many 
centuries since that time people have continued to 
glorify this Hebrew ruler. It may come to us, 
therefore, as something of a shock to be told that, 
viewed by the standards of enlightened Christian 
times, the life of Solomon must in the main be 
called a failure. 

Now people are not interested in failures unless 
they show how one may succeed. The abiding in- 
terest one feels in the ruins of the Forum and the 
Parthenon is due not so much to their constantly 
reminding us of their own decay, but rather because 
they remind us of the strength and power, the 
success of those great peoples who first builded 
them. If a story of failure can be told so as to 
point out to us where we may avoid those mistakes 
which made for failure, then it is of intense and 
abiding interest to us. The melancholy conclusion 
written just above the word " finis " in the bi- 
ographies of many of earth's most famous men is 
interesting to us largely because it points a moral 
and adorns a tale. 

There is a way in which the career of Solomon 
is one of unqualified success. His was the Augus- 
tan age of Hebrew history. David, the Julius 
Caesar of his time, had conquered Israel's foes, 



A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 69 



and had won a wide-felt respect for his powers. 
Dying, he had left a rich and magnificent kingdom 
to his son. David forbore to build a temple with 
his own hands. He believed those hands, stained 
with blood, were unworthy to construct a temple 
to the living God. Prophetic of his son's career, 
or at least expressive of his wish for that son, the 
warlike king had named him " Solomon," or 
" Peaceful." In the career of Solomon we find that 
in one way his name is indicative of his character, 
if by peace we mean absence of war. Some cap- 
tious and revolutionary orator of Solomon's day, 
some Hebrew Patrick Henry, might have made the 
charge that absence of war, at least absence of 
war against foreign powers, is by no means the 
summum bonum of a nation. It is entirely possible 
to have base and ignominious peace, as it is pos- 
sible to have unholy and unjust wars. We do not 
say that the peace of Solomon's reign was base and 
ignoble. On the contrary it was a glorious peace, 
devoted to a glorious cause. Viewed from the 
standpoint of Solomon's time his whole reign was 
a glorious success. In judging anyone's life, how- 
ever, there are other things to be considered be- 
sides his official objective acts. 

Richard III. of England made his way to the 
throne over the proverbial sea of blood. In- 
fanticide, fratricide, regicide, uxoricide, amicocide 



70 A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 

and every other form of murder, has been charged 
against him, as well as perjuries and treasons that 
in themselves were most heinous. Near the close 
of his career, frightened by specters, he himself 
said, " My conscience hath a thousand several 
tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale, 
and every tale condemns me for a villain. ,, Yet in 
the official acts of this monstrous sovereign, no 
English king, we are assured by the historian, has 
ever deserved more admiration from the common 
people for what he did for them. Hence we see 
that although we are accustomed to judge a man's 
character and his acts as one and the same thing, so 
that it is hard to discover any good in the villain 
or any evil in the hero, there is still a difference 
between the successful and meritorious performance 
of one's public and official duties and the private 
character of the performer. We should not care to 
argue that there is not a taint to a good act by a bad 
hand. If our Congregational friends actually be- 
lieved Mr. Rockefeller's millions were tainted, they 
were logical, if not practical, in refusing a gift from 
him. Yet we leave it with you to answer if the 
most tainted of all tainted moneys will not buy 
coal to warm the shivering and bread to feed the 
hungry, and medicine to alleviate the pain of the 
world's poor? Perhaps the tears of the widow and 
the orphan could wash all taint from even a rob- 



A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 71 

ber's gold? This is another way of saying " God 
can use even unworthy means to accomplish worthy 
ends." Though not believing in the principle that 
the end justifies the means, we none the less agree 
that all God's agents, save Jesus alone, have been 
more or less imperfect, and therefore unworthy 
agents. 

In Germany one's philosophy need not be one's re- 
ligion, as witness Professor Harnack of our own 
time, who, I am told, is decidedly evangelical in his 
preaching, but who, in his theology, rather shocks 
some of the more conservative. We do not sep- 
arate religion and theology, in America, but such a 
separation is possible, as is seen in this case. 

Now apply this general thought to Solomon and 
we can see that, successful as was his reign, glori- 
ous as were his accomplishments, he was none the 
less a failure as a man. Perhaps we may go farther 
and call him one of the most gigantic failures in all 
history. His was a great kingdom, his was untold 
wealth. He had the love of his people, possessed 
great talents and a wonderful intellect, his judg- 
ment and decision were admirable, and his wisdom 
proverbial. We will review some reasons for be- 
lieving him this failure. 

When a twig falls no one notes it, but when a 
giant pine thunders to the ground, the whole for- 
est trembles, and birds hush their songs. Great is 



72 A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 



the fall. When an unknown man falls, his failure 
is noted little by the world, but when a Saul, a 
Solomon, a Caesar, fall, the thunder of their fall 
reverberates through the forest glades of the ages. 

We call Solomon a failure because he finished 
lower down in the scale than he began. Anyone 
is a failure who has retrograded, usually in propor- 
tion to the retrogression. Let me illustrate by a 
reference to caste. Suppose two men live in India, 
and suppose there are five well defined grades, or 
castes of society. He who starts in the first grade 
and closes in the second is a failure as compared 
with the one who starts in the fifth and closes in the 
fourth. Conscious of the fact that the illustration 
is not perfect, let it none the less suggest the idea 
that failure means a falling back, and success a 
climbing up. 

Had Solomon started from a more lowly posi- 
tion, his failure would not have been so conspicu- 
ous. We do not refer here so much to his posi- 
tion as king, for he began and ended his career as 
Israel's earthly sovereign; but a careful study, or 
even a superficial glance at his life, will show that 
he finished on a lower moral grade than the one on 
which he began. 

Now a youth in our day may be hampered, as 
was Solomon, by the position into which he is born. 



A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 73 

There may be greater probabilities that he will pull 
back than that he will advance the standing of his 
family; but it is not by the standing of his family 
that we would judge him. It is rather by whether 
he is better morally at the close of his career than 
he was in former days. It is whether his character 
has been growing stronger and sounder, or whether 
it has been disintegrating. 

Dr. Hillis said recently that young people who 
are given the advantages of social position and 
wealth have a moral handicap placed upon them. 
Let us add, though, that if handicapped by their 
position, the moral fiber required and the moral 
strength exerted to overcome that handicap can 
make their success even more conspicuous and more 
valuable than if they had not had the handicap. 
Let our young people, and our older ones, study 
carefully the things that have demoralized men and 
disintegrated their character, have robbed them of 
their truest success, and then shun those things, 
lest it be true of us that like Solomon we finish 
lower down than we began. 

We call Solomon a failure because with his great 
wisdom and insight he seems deliberately to have 
chosen the wrong. He showed others the " steep 
and thorny road to Heaven, whilst like a puffed and 
reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of 
dalliance trod and recked not his own rede." 



74s A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 

Moral obligation is unknown where one knows 
not right and wrong. Some time ago a man 
crawled under a great freight engine to adjust an 
eccentric. The throttle had not been duly fastened, 
and it eased out. Steam shot into the steam chest, 
thence to the cylinders; the pistons moved, the 
wheels rolled, and beneath those wheels the unfor- 
tunate hostler was caught and ground to death. 
The locomotive was not punished; it could not be 
punished. No court tried it for manslaughter. It 
still drags heavy trains of cars. There was no brain 
in its huge iron body to reason and to guide. Again, 
if a man-slaying lion or tiger is killed, it is gen- 
erally because the keepers fear he will be dangerous 
again and not because he is executed for sins com- 
mitted. We do not judge idiots and lunatics as 
we judge men of sound minds and of good reason- 
ing faculties. The higher our wisdom the more 
in proportion are we held accountable for our 
acts. 

The elementary catechism asks "Who was the 
wisest man?" and answers " Solomon." By the 
very token of his unequaled wisdom we judge him 
and find him a failure. He knew better. A Latin 
poet wrote " I see, and approve, the better things, 
but I actually do the worser." Solomon certainly 
saw, he certainly knew. His writings prove that 
he knew. He warned young men that the way of 



A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 75 



the strange woman led down to the gates of the 
grave; that her feet took hold upon Sheol and that 
her guests were in the depths of hell. Yet Solomon 
himself brought women from strange lands and 
established them in his palace. He knew that to 
serve God was the highest duty of kings, as well 
as of common men ; yet in his old age, to give pleas- 
ure to these foreign people he had brought into his 
palace, he instituted the worship of false gods ; he 
who had erected a temple to the true God, also 
erected blocks of wood and stone and burned in- 
cense before them. When a king descends from 
the worship of the Supreme God to bow himself, 
or permit his subjects to bow, before idols, he is 
an apostate and an idolater. This declension in 
worship marks the progress of his failure. 

We call Solomon a failure because he misused 
the great power God gave him. Power because he 
was a king, and power because of his wealth. He 
plundered and oppressed, and then used the pro- 
ceeds in shameful pleasures. Visits from queens 
of Sheba turned his head. He came to regard pomp 
more than purity. He loved glory better than he 
loved God. He had degenerated into an Epicure, — 
though the word itself is an anachronism. 

Solomon was one of God's stewards. The king- 
ship was his stewardship. All material things, even 
pur physical and intellectual gifts as we call them. 



76 A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 

are loans. Our talents, whether of music, of art, 
of poetry, of eloquence, of business capacity, of 
beauty, — all these are loans. They are lent us 
by Him who possesses all things. We control them 
to-day, but we did not have them yesterday, and 
we shall not have them to-morrow. At least not 
in an earthly sense of possession. Whose to-day 
is Chopin's or Mendelssohn's, or Beethoven's, or 
Bach's music? Yours, mine, everybody's. The 
talent was loaned them. As stewards they used 
the loan wisely and well. Whose to-day is the art 
of Praxiteles, of Pheidias, of Raphael, of Millet? 
Is it not the common property of humanity ? So is 
Virgil's, Dante's, and Tennyson's verse. So with 
Helen's beauty, and Esther's, and Cleopatra's. 
Beauty, genius, wealth; these are possessions that 
men and women are lent but for a day. 

Solomon was not a wise steward. He used his 
loans for pleasures of the sense, like any volup- 
tuary of an Oriental king. His life was thus 
doomed to prove a failure. In old age, in decay, 
in death, fires do not warm, gorgeous palaces do 
not keep out disease, and that fell sergeant Death 
is so strict in his arrest he cannot be bribed. When 
he arrested Solomon, the charge against him 
might truly have been " You are charged with 
having misused power, position, influence and 
means." 



A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 77 

We call Solomon a failure because he forgot 
God. His reign begins piously, with noble prayers. 
Even when the temple was dedicated, Solomon still 
prayed, for dedicatory prayers are from his lips. 
But he turned, in his old age, to the false gods 
of his companions. How immensely true is the say- 
ing that evil companions destroy us. The Apostle 
wrote " Evil communications corrupt good man- 
ner s." Is it not sadly true that men and women, as 
life advances and therefore as they inevitably have 
less and less of this world before them, yet love 
more ardently this world and its hollow pleasures, 
its gewgaws, tinseled joys ? Is it not also sadly true, 
that often in that same proportion as one comes 
nearer the time when he must meet his God, he 
thinks less of the things of God, and cares less for 
God, His people and His church ? How pathetically 
true is it that many a young man or woman has 
begun life with high ideals, with religious train- 
ing, and with genuine love for better things; and 
yet gradually, by daily contact with base men and 
women, with irreligious and unhallowed lives, with 
pagans in Christian lands, have slowly but surely 
drifted off from the old moorings, and been lost 
in life's seas of selfishness and worldliness! 

Solomon has failed and has long since passed on 
to be judged of that God whom he neglected and 
shamed. But you and I, dear friend and brother, 



78 A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 

still live. From his career we may learn to shun 
those evils he harbored, and which finally overcame 
and destroyed him. Pray God we may grow old 
wisely and well. Pray God we be unharmed by 
all that allures and beckons us toward the flower- 
decked, broad and easy way which leads to the 
gates of death and the kingdom of everlasting 
despair. 

So let us examine our own lives, in the light of 
this great failure, and let us ask : " Are we making 
for failure or for success? Are we slowly, with 
God's help, climbing higher, or are we gradually 
sinking lower? How about our high aspirations, 
our dreams of purity, of noble service? Is the 
gold tarnished? Is the luster dimmed? Is the 
fragrance and sweetness gone, or going?" If so, 
we must know that when our life is over, whatever 
men may say on our tombstone, God will write 
over our records in His books: Failure. But 
humble, weak, erring as we are, if we are trust- 
ing, praying, striving to be kept in humble paths 
of service, He will surely crown us with fadeless 
immortelles of success. 

" Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about 
with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside 
every weight, and the sin which doth so easily 
beset us, and let us run with patience the race that 
is set before us, 



A MAGNIFICENT FAILURE 79 

" Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of 
our faith; who for the joy that was set before 
him endured the cross, despising the shame, and 
is set down at the right hand of the throne of 
God." 



VII 



THE SADNESS OF A KING 



" My tears have been my meat day and night." — Ps. 42 : 3. 
" The Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil 
spirit from the Lord troubled him." — I Sam. 16 : 14. 



HE noble spirit of King David is disquieted 



within him. The weakening spirit of Saul 



is troubled. As the world calls goodness 
and badness, here is a good king and here is a bad 
king. Both are unhappy. Listen also to the cry 
of Jesus : " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even 
unto death," and to the exclamation of Paul : " I 
am the chief of sinners," and to his pathetic cry, 
"Who shall deliver me from the body of this 
death?" 

Let us think briefly of sadness as it is manifested 
in human life, not that we may be made sadder, 
but, if possible, that we may be cured of our sad- 
ness. Let us frankly admit that sadness, as such, 
is not sinful ; that the sum and substance of religion 
is by no means wholly joyousness. This is said 
because we hear so much about the duty of being 
joyful and the wickedness of being sorrowful. 




THE SADNESS OF A KING 81 



We seem to live in an optimistic age. Now op- 
timism, if by that term we mean a cheerful view 
of life, is essentially Christian; but optimism, if by 
that term we mean that everything is all right just 
as it is, and could not be made better, is essentially 
pagan. This contrast in terms is made after very 
careful consideration of their meaning. 

A bright and hopeful outlook upon life is Chris- 
tian because Christ taught us that God is our Father, 
and that He is taking care of His children. He said 
that God feeds the sparrows and the ravens and 
clothes the lily and sends rain on the just and the 
unjust. But the other kind of optimism is pagan, 
because it means, in its ultimate analysis, essentially 
this, " Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die." 
We may paraphrase that sentiment as follow : — 
" What's the use of being worried about it ? Let's 
have a good time while we live ; that is what we live 
for, anyhow. We are here on a pleasure party. 
The world is a grand picnic ground. What, Ho ! 
boys and girls ! come ! let's dance and sing and shout 
and play beneath the green trees, before death has 
his grand banquet. The night comes when it will 
all end, there will be nothing after that, so there is 
no need to worry. On with the dance! Let joy 
be unconfined ! " 

If serious-minded hearers are disposed to ques- 
tion the truth of such a view, let them read the 



82 THE SADNESS OF A KING 

stories of orgies in the worship of Baal; of Satur- 
nalia, of Bacchic revels, of feasts of Nero, of cele- 
brations in honor of Apollo in the grove of Daphne 
at Antioch. In all these pagan celebrations is the 
much-lauded picnic-view of life, as its theory works 
out in practice. 

Now let us thoroughly understand each other. 
If you believe that you were created and put into 
this world solely to " have a good time/' you will 
not believe a single thing in my sermon. But if 
you believe the chief end of man is nobler — say, 
to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, — you 
are in a position to follow and to accept what is 
said. I cannot believe there is any virtue in being 
sad, nor can I discover any sin in being happy and 
joyous. It all depends on why you are sad or why 
you are happy, and what is the motive that under- 
lies your joy. The world no longer permits itself 
to be imposed upon with the idea that anything that 
gives pleasure is necessarily wrong, and anything 
that gives pain is ipso facto right or virtuous. To 
be concrete, it is no longer considered a sin, even 
by later-day disciples of John Wesley, for Chris- 
tians to wear golden ornaments, or ladies to adorn 
themselves with beautiful garments and becoming 
bonnets. It is only when these things are carried 
to extremes that allow them to become the ruling 
motives of life that we consider them wrong or 



THE SADNESS OF A KING 83 

sinful. Christians for the most part no longer draw 
an imaginary line in front of every temple of Thes- 
pis and say " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no 
further." It is only when the representation on the 
stage within this temple is immoral or degrading, 
or merely inane and calculated to waste valuable 
time, that it becomes a sin in our eyes to enter 
the doors of those temples. 

We certainly do not consider it sinful to laugh. 
Grouchy as was Thomas Carlyle, we none the less 
find him paraphrasing Shakespeare by saying : " The 
man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, 
stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is already 
a treason and a stratagem." We modern Christians 
will not permit some mournful friar, who digs his 
own grave in the solemn hour of midnight, singing 
doleful songs the while, to foist upon us the false 
doctrine that God is pleased when we are sorrow- 
ful. Nor will the flagellating brothers, with bare, 
bleeding shoulders, whipping themselves from pillar 
to post, ever again make us believe that we honor 
God by dishonoring this frame which the Bible has 
called His temple. Nevertheless, friends, there is 
essentially a great truth underlying this world of 
error, and that truth may be summed up in this 
statement: The life of man, the soul of man, the 
immortal destiny of man, are all too vast, too com- 
plicated, too Godlike, to be made absolutely happy 



84 THE SADNESS OF A KING 

by the things that can be seen and handled and heard 
and tasted in this present world. " Man's unhap- 
piness, as I construe, comes of his greatness. It is 
because there is an infinite in him which with 
all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the 
finite." 

But since man's unhappiness cannot be said, in 
every instance, to arise from his greatness, let us 
look briefly at some of the causes of our woes, real 
or imaginary, " and all we mourn for." < 

Sometimes our unhappiness is from purely mate- 
rial causes. Melancholia is a disease. No demon- 
stration is needed since your own experience has 
proved to you that, all other things being equal, life 
looks fairer when the sun shines than it does when 
the clouds lower. You and I are less prone to pro- 
pound to ourselves, and to others, the dialectical don- 
key's question " Is life worth living? " when all the 
functions of our body work well, when digestion 
is perfect, and altogether we are free from the 
hamper ings of headache, the ravages of rheuma- 
tism, or the terrors of toothache. The cure for 
materialistic melancholy is likewise materialistic. 
Here at least is true the famous dictum, " Similia 
similibus curantur" If the disease is physical, cer- 
tainly the remedy, even if a mental one, must affect 
the physical nature. The remedy required for a 
great deal of melancholy is a little more fresh air, 



THE SADNESS OF A KING 85 

a little more exercise, a little more Fletcherizing, 
a little less highly seasoned food. 

Sometimes our unhappiness is from a sense of 
uselessness, a feeling of failure. One may have 
set for himself the accomplishment of a certain end 
in life, and failing of that accomplishment he may 
be thrown into a heavier or lighter state of sadness 
by feeling that he has failed. There would be 
manifold manifestations of this if we could read 
the heart-lives of many of our more serious-minded 
friends all about us in this present day. The trouble 
seems to be that we have set some impossible or 
some incorrect standard and have been unable to 
measure up to it, or else to keep up to it. I know 
a clergyman who occasionally preaches very able, 
very helpful sermons; but on the principle that the 
clock cannot strike twelve every time, this clergy- 
man does not preach his best sermons every Sun- 
day. If you meet him on Monday after he has de- 
livered one of the sermons which he considers a 
failure, you will feel when you have got within fifty 
feet of him that you are approaching a combination 
of an ice and an indigo factory. You find him in 
that state of mind spoken of by the author of the 
book of Ecclesiastes, who moans " I gave my heart 
to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly : I 
perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. . . . 
I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What 



86 THE SADNESS OF A KING 

doeth it ? . . . Yea, I hated all my labour which I had 
taken under the sun. Vanitas vanitatum; omnia est 
vanitas/' 

One may state the cure of this species of sadness 
by accurately stating the disease itself. It is in fact 
neither more nor less than that the man has consid- 
ered himself set to do something which no man is 
set to do. He has, in other words, taken himself a 
little too seriously. 

The whole world, its happiness and its destiny, 
does not depend on this one sermon that I preach 
to-day, or on all the sermons that are preached in 
all the world. What is said of sermons is true of 
other lines of endeavor. You have not jarred the 
good old world out of her track, or changed her 
axis, or delayed her in her course, by the few mis- 
takes you have made this past week ; and moreover, 
if you have labored conscientiously you have accom- 
plished more than you think. Pippa, in Browning's 
poem, did not know her song snatched a soul out 
of baleful sin. 

Sometimes our unhappiness is from real loss or 
sorrow, brought about by events external to our own 
minds and hearts, absolutely beyond our control. 
Sickness, absence, or death of loved ones may be 
classed under this head. Shall I be blamed if, when 
my friend has gone from me, I am unable to show 
the world as smiling a face as I showed when that 



THE SADNESS OF A KING 



87 



face was reflecting the sunlit life of him who walked 
at my side? If Lear's two daughters turned 'their 
poor, white-haired father out into the pitiless storm 
of the night, is he altogether blameworthy that he 
cries to his one faithful friend and attendant, " O, 
fool, I shall go mad " ? If Hamlet's uncle has 
murdered Hamlet's father, and wedded Hamlet's 
mother, and a ghost has come from the grave to 
tell him this, can one say that Hamlet should cast 
it all off and smile and jest; that he should snap 
his fingers in the world's face and say : " Well, the 
old man's dead, and gone. True, he was murdered, 
but what of it? True, my mother has married the 
murderer; but what of that? True, this murderer 
has popped in between the election and my hopes; 
but what of that? I will laugh. I will sing. I will 
shout for joy. The world's a grand picnic anyway, 
and I am in for my part of the morris dance. I 
will be there when they pass around the sandwiches 
and pickles ; and the brown ale I will quaff ; for what 
should a man do but be merry ? For look you how 
blithe my mother is, and my father dead within 
these two hours ! " 

For this species of sadness, which is largely the 
result of external conditions, over which the mind 
may in time come to have control, but which it 
has not yet conquered, one cannot so easily state a 
cure. Of course it is even true that there are con- 



88 THE SADNESS OF A KING 



ditions which, as the world now goes, seem to be 
irremediable, at least for this life. Such perhaps 
were in the mind of the poet, Edwin Markham, 
when he spoke of " immedicable woes." What men 
have been pleased to call " the consolations of re- 
ligion " are the only consolations that can be given 
after all. Lear's youngest daughter may return 
from France and espouse the old king's cause, but 
that does not bring sanity back to his mind. Ham- 
let's poisoned sword may find the heart of blood- 
stained Claudius, but that does not re-seat the elder 
Hamlet on the throne of Denmark. That woe, the 
woe of his murder, is indeed " immedicable." Yet 
when I go to your home after a great sorrow has 
come into that home, I find, as every bishop of souls 
finds, that the only thing which affords you any 
surcease for your sorrow, is the balm of Gilead, 
which by a strange mingling of truth and metaphor, 
flows for you and me. In our dark hours we know 
our Lord sympathizes with us : He has been in Geth- 
semane before us. It comforts us to be told that 
our sorrows are known to Him who was acquainted 
with grief. 

Sometimes our unhappiness is from the infinite 
nature of our souls. Nothing absolutely satisfies 
us because we are essentially unsatisfiable. The 
mere animal takes his fill of material comforts and 
seems to rest in perfect satisfaction, but with man 



THE SADNESS OF A KING 89 



it is different. Give him a marble palace in which 
to dwell. Clothe him in purple and fine linen. Load 
his banquet board with richest viands. He is yet 
unsatisfied. Surround him with friends, store his 
mind with the learning of the ages, and his restless 
spirit drives him on. Crowd his life with worldly 
honors and successes, and all worldly joys, still into 
his eyes there comes at times that far-away yearn- 
ing look as of a homesick pilgrim in a foreign land. 
In proportion to the delicacy, refinement, and beauty 
of their spirits men are so unsatisfied and unsatis- 
fiable, that when we look into their eyes we know 
what he meant who said that we are strangers and 
pilgrims in this land as all our fathers before us 
were. They and we realize that they can tarry but 
for a night. I love to think of the great spirit of 
Lincoln, around whose very laughter there glitters a 
tear; whose smile is overspread with a nameless sad- 
ness, as some morning in May, when sunshine and 
shower are strangely blended. Long ago St. Augus- 
tine felt this sorrow, this sadness, this melancholy of 
the orphan spirit of man, and long ago St. Augustine 
correctly stated the meaning: " O God," he says in 
his confessions, " Thou hast made us for Thyself 
and our hearts are restless within us until they rest 
in Thee." The singer of Israel a long while before 
Augustine had said, " Thou hast made man a little 
lower than God," and because he is made thus in- 



90 THE SADNESS OF A KING 

finite, finite things will never quite satisfy. And 
as the old Bishop of Hippo has suggested, the cure 
for this species of sadness is to rest in God. 

O heart of man, restless like the surging sea 
which cannot be still ; O heart of man, hungry like 
the hungry sea which cannot be satisfied; there is 
one stillness and one satisfaction for thee, and only 
one. It is that peace and that satisfaction which 
come only when thou hast quaffed the divine elixir, 
breathed the ambrosial air, and feasted upon the 
heavenly fruits of thy Father's country, and thine 
own. 



VIII 



LEST I TOO BE A CASTAWAY 

" Lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, 
I myself should be a castaway." — I Cor. 9 : 27. 

" Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed 
lest he fall." — I Cor. 10: 12. 

IN the early hours of the battle of Waterloo, 
Wellington feigned a retreat. Napoleon was 
accustomed to such feints, and at first was 
troubled; but when he saw the van of the English 
army disappear, he rose in his stirrups and the 
lightning of victory flashed from his eyes. He 
swept his glass over all points of the battlefield. 
He examined the slopes, noted the declivities, scru- 
tinized the clumps of trees, and seemed to be count- 
ing each bush. Then he dropped his glass, and fell 
to thinking. Wellington had drawn back. It was 
necessary, Napoleon thought, to do only one thing : 
to hurl his cuirassiers upon the English infantry, 
and crush them. The retreat of the English would 
become a disorderly rout. He called a messenger, 
and sent him full speed to Paris to announce that 
the battle was won. It is hardly necessary to add 
that it had not even well begun, and that the intrepid 
English soldiers, under their great and fearless 

91 



92 LEST I BE A CASTAWAY 

leader, had not yet begun to fight. Six hours later 
a wretched, downcast, defeated, humiliated Napo- 
leon was creeping, under cover of the night, towards 
Paris. All that was left of his proud army were 
shattered and scattered groups, flying in disorderly 
retreat in every direction. 

This famous story illustrates a great principle, 
and that principle as applied to Christian experience 
is summed up in the words of the old hymn : 

"Ne'er think the victory won, 
Nor lay thine armor down; 
Thine arduous work will not be done, 
Till thou obtain thy crown." 

To-day there is an all but universal craze for 
optimism. There is an all but universal denuncia- 
tion of anything that may be construed as pessi- 
mism. We are ready to follow almost any prophet 
who will tell us that he can lead us into success. 
Let him paint the future in rosy colors, let him cry 
from the housetops his greatness and his fitness to 
save, and thousands of his fellow-beings will trust 
to him. In the meantime saner prophets may see 
clearly some impending doom, and may announce 
that doom : they will be greeted with jeers, be in- 
sulted, be denounced, with that ultimate word in 
the modern vocabulary of vituperation, namely Pes- 
simist. The pessimist is looked upon as the lowest 
of all classes of thinkers. Almost universally, Cas- 



LEST I BE A CASTAWAY 



93 



sandra prophecies are derided. Almost universally, 
those who foretell the destruction of Jerusalem are 
met with the angry cry, " Away with this man ! 
Crucify him ! " 

Notwithstanding this, and even at the risk of 
being called more or less pessimistic, the pulpit of 
our day must sound warnings. It must blow the 
trumpets ; must assemble the people ; must warn the 
army when the enemies are descried upon the hori- 
zon; or are even storming at the gates. For one 
to cry " Peace, peace," when there is no peace, is 
to place the burden of the responsibility of the peo- 
ple's destruction upon his own shoulders. The 
ancient prophets warned of impending dangers ; the 
apostles were not silent; Christ Himself thundered 
the doom of the city of David. 

There is such a thing as being lulled to sleep with 
a sense of security when there is no security. Over- 
powering poppy odors are said to make drowsy the 
poor wretch who throws himself upon the ground 
to rest near where the flowers grow; and there, 
dreaming of sunlit glades and angel voices and 
sweet odors as of paradise, his life is sapped away. 

St. Paul recognized this danger. He feared that 
a feeling of security might lull him into a spiritual 
sleep in which he would be senseless to the dangers 
about him, and he who had been a preacher of 
the gospel of salvation, might himself become a 



94 LEST I BE A CASTAWAY 

castaway. Our Lord recognized it when, in His 
parable of the Sower, He said that the seed which 
fell upon stony ground was symbolic of those shal- 
low hearts who receive the Word, but in the hour 
iof temptation fall away. 

We too, are to remember this danger. It should 
\not make us morbid, or gloomy, or pessimistic, but 
it should put us upon our guard; it should urge 
us to struggle against those disintegrating, demor- 
alizing, destroying forces which are throttling the 
world to-day. The battle is not won; the armor 
must not be laid down until God Himself calls us 
into His presence and rewards us with the crown 
of victory. 

Now this danger of lapsing, or falling, or becom- 
ing a castaway, may be personal and individual. 
"Lest I myself should be a castaway," said St. 
Paul. When Jesus told His followers that they need 
not expect Him to feed them loaves and fishes, but 
that if they followed Him it must be for spiritual 
reasons, many of His disciples went back and 
walked with Him no more. Those deserters had 
known the companionship of Jesus. Perhaps as dis- 
ciples, they had sat at His feet, had listened to the 
sublime words that flowed from His lips. And yet 
when a hard saying was propounded to them,, they 
fell away. 

The personal element must never be forgotten in 



LEST I BE A CASTAWAY 95 

these dangerous times. The doctrine of the per- 
severance of the saints does not guarantee that the 
saints shall be held in their position willy-nilly, if 
they do not themselves try to persevere. The very 
word perseverance means that they are to go 
through hardships, and are to continue to struggle 
in order that they may succeed. They are to make 
their calling and election sure. Some years ago, in 
one of our Southern cities, an epidemic of small- 
pox was raging. One of the chief physicians of 
the town came and went amongst the patients. At 
first he took great care and precaution, but little by 
little he grew negligent, scornful of the dread dis- 
ease, considering himself its master. But one day 
he was compelled to diagnose for himself that the 
disease had laid hold upon him. He had not obeyed 
those laws of health and had not taken those pre- 
cautionary measures which he counseled others to 
obey and to take. He became in that sense a cast- 
away. We must never grow negligent. " Watch 
and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.' ' Remem- 
ber the seed that fell on stony ground. When the 
hour of temptation comes, shallow-rooted Christians 
are likely to wither. God forbid that anyone in 
this Divine presence to-day, that any member of 
this church or congregation, should ever lapse from 
his high estate. God grant that each one shall fight 
on until death shall bring him his great victory. 



96 



LEST I BE A CASTAWAY 



Churches may fall away. Whole congregations, 
whole denominations may disintegrate. St. John, 
in his vision on the Isle of Patmos, received from 
the risen Christ messages to the seven churches 
which were in Asia, and he was told to say unto 
the angel of the church at Ephesus : 

" I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left 
thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art 
fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will 
come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick 
out of his place, except thou repent." 

Think of it! One of the first of the Christian 
churches, a church that had heard the preaching of 
John who had lain on the bosom of the Lord and 
the eloquence of Paul whose soul had been set afire 
with flames from heaven — this church had left its 
first love! It was cautioned to remember from 
whence it had fallen and repent, and to do its first 
work. There stood the church, like one of the 
branches of the golden candlestick of God, throw- 
ing its light throughout the world, but because of its 
apostasy, unless it repented its candlestick would be 
removed ; and removed it was. There is to-day no 
trace of the church that was in Ephesus in the days 
of the apostles. 

Melancholy is the record of abandoned churches. 
What can be more pathetic than such a sight! 
Hubert C. Herring, in addressing the United Rep- 



LEST I BE A CASTAWAY 



97 



resentatives of the Mission Boards of several great 
churches, said: 

" My thoughts wing themselves away to a little white 
church on the hillside in southern Wisconsin. It is closed 
and locked. For years no preacher has stood in its pulpit, 
no people have sat in its pews; but* I know of a time 
when a goodly company of men and women, boys and 
girls heard there the word of God's grace." 

Passing along the thoroughfares of almost any 
great American city there may be seen the placard 
of the real estate dealer on the walls or doors of 
some deserted church : " For Sale." Goldsmith has' 
sung the requiem of the Deserted Village. The 
world is full of ruined cities. Tyre, Nineveh and 
Babylon have literally fulfilled the ancient prophe- 
cies that the wild beasts of the desert should make 
their lairs underneath their palaces, and that the 
owl and cormorant and all doleful creatures should 
hoot in their deserted streets, and the fishermen 
should spread their nets to dry upon blocks of stone 
that were once altars in the temples of the gods. A 
mournful thing indeed is the deserted farm or aban- 
doned city, but more pathetic still is the abandoned 
church. Not always a sign of wickedness or in- 
fidelity, or even of carelessness on the part of the 
people of the church, the deserted sanctuary is still 
a warning that if any church does fall away from 
its first love, its candlestick will be removed, because 
its light has already gone out. 



98 LEST I BE A CASTAWAY 

What country was it that first heard the story of 
the cross? Beginning at Jerusalem and Judea and 
going through Samaria, and then unto the uttermost 
parts of the world, the gospel was preached in 
Palestine, in Asia, then in Greece, then in Rome, 
then in Spain, in Gaul, and in Britain. For cen- 
turies there had been Christianity in Syria and 
Palestine when our own Germanic or British ances- 
tors first heard the story of the cross; and yet 
to-day the Christian church, save as an exotic, is 
not found in Palestine or in Syria. The country 
that first had the gospel has lapsed into Moham- 
medanism or worse; and there is no very great 
assurance that full light will ever return to those 
parts of the world from whence the golden candle- 
stick was taken away. 

Church organizations may dwindle and die, the 
whole communion may pass away. There is much 
talk to-day of the passing of the church. Some- 
one, perhaps Chesterton, has daringly paraphrased 
Wagner, and instead of singing of " The Twilight 
of the Gods " speaks of " The Night of Christian- 
ity." There is much that is untrue, but there is some 
element of truth in these contentions of many as 
to the passing of the church. This certainly is true : 
that if the church does not live up to the high ideals 
set by Christ Himself, its candlestick will be re- 
moved. God will substitute some other agency to 



LEST I BE A CASTAWAY 99 

perform His work in the world. He does not use a 
dead agency, or one that is out of date. " There- 
fore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, 
beware lest ye also, being led away with the error 
of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness." 

Nations may become castaways. Where now are 
the great empires of old, Egypt, Assyria, Baby- 
lonia, Greece, Carthage and Rome? Their hollow 
voices, like the dismal moanings of disembodied em- 
pire-spirits, echo out of the dead past : " We were, 
but we are not " ; their very dust is not. 

Great Christian powers, as well as pagan, may 
become castaways, and fall from their high estates. 
The so-called Holy Roman Empire of the Middle 
Ages, the Spain of Charles V, the Portugal of other 
days — where are those countries? Dismembered, 
or disrobed, or chained, or altered beyond recog- 
nition. 

Nations that have once been Christian nations 
may fall away from Christ. Read the story of 
France, and how the church in France, grown rich 
and powerful, forgot its main task, its essential 
duty, and fell away from its first love. What 
took place in France, has, in some measure, also 
taken place in Italy, in Portugal, in Spain, in Ger- 
many, in Austria and even in England : yea, and in 
America ! 

America has her obligations. How will she meet 



100 LEST I BE A CASTAWAY 

these obligations? Lucifer, the archangel Lucifer, 
son of the morning, fell. Humanly speaking, the 
outlook is none too bright in Christian countries. 
To-day, not to speak of the war, abroad and 
at home, and everywhere, there are strikes, 
crime and degradation. There is unseemly wrang- 
ling in high places ; there are scrambles for office, for 
power, for wealth; and we Americans seem to be 
divided between those who are degenerating their 
souls with luxuries, or burning them out witli 
hot desires for luxuries which we cannot obtain. 
Again humanly speaking we would say that these 
things seem to threaten the integrity of the Ameri- 
can republic as a Christian nation. Byron's " Greek 
Bard " attributed the lost greatness of his country 
to the bacchanalian revels, the Samian wine and the 
Pyrrhic dance. Let luxury-loving America remem- 
ber also the " Cotter's Saturday Night," in which 
Burns draws a picture of the homely, humble life 
of his people, and prays that Scotia's hardy sons 
of rustic toil may be blest with health and peace and 
sweet content ; and that heaven may keep their sim- 
ple lives free from the weak and vile contagion of 
luxury. This nation was founded by Christians, 
for Christians, and upon Christian principles. Now 
that it has grown great and rich, will it forget its 
first love? Must some future bard be compelled 
to sing, paraphrasing Isaiah, " How art thou fallen, 



LEST I BE A CASTAWAY 101 

America, thou that didst inspire and enlighten 
the world ? " Shall barbaric fishermen a thousand 
years hence dry their nets on those docks where 
to-day the ocean leviathans unload their burdens? 
Shall strange doleful creatures haunt the ruined 
streets of New York, Philadelphia and Chicago? 
Shall desert winds sing requiems over the grave of 
American greatness? Stranger things have hap- 
pened — as strange things may happen again. 

There is but one salvation for the individual, for 
the church, for the state, and that salvation is in 
simple, vital religion, in Christ's power to save. 
Without this we are all in a mad dance of death, 
but with this we are all on the high road to life. 
Let individuals, let churches, let states, if they have 
gone astray, repent and turn to God, and obey Him, 
for He will have mercy upon them — unto our God, 
for He will abundantly pardon. 

"And when he came to himself, he said . . . 

1 will arise and go to my father." 



IX 



THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE 



"Noah opened the window of the ark . . . 

"He sent forth a raven . . . 

"He sent forth a dove . . ."—Gen. 8:6, 7, 8. 

HE ancient story of the flood never grows 



old. It is more than mere history. It is so 



beautifully symbolic that it brings new 
messages to every generation. At once parabolic 
and prophetic, we of to-day may find it illustrative 
of great truths which are as essential to our hap- 
piness and well-being as they were to men of long 
ago; truths that, though often told, are " new every 
morning and fresh every evening." 

To-day let us find a message for our own guid- 
ance, comfort, and edification from this majestic 
epic of a time long gone. Let us seek to grow 
wiser and better as we think of the ark of God's 
protecting love for us during the voyage of life; 
as we are swirled hither and yon by the eddies and 
currents of the dangerous floods. And while we 
grieve that there is so much of the raven nature, 
and so little of the dove spirit, in us; let us rejoice 
that our Noah, our " Rest," our Lord, puts forth 




THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE 103 



His hand to receive and protect the wounded, stray- 
ing, fluttering purity and faith there is in us all. 

In our story, when the raven is sent forth, it does 
not return. The world in which it finds itself is a 
raven world, a world suited to a raven's nature 
and needs. Carrion bodies of beast and bird and 
man furnished it not only a resting place for its 
feet, but also food such as it craved. 

From times of old this ill-omened bird has been 
associated with death and the dead. In speaking 
of the murder of her King, Lady Macbeth says : 

"The raven himself is hoarse, 
That croaks the fateful entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements." 

In Hamlet, as the murder in the little drama within 
the great drama is about to be committed, the ex- 
cited prince bursts forth : 

"The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge." 

Poe writes a poem in which this idea of the raven is 
presented. His raven is the sinister and ill-omened 
power which sits in the heart it has mastered, and 
croaks to it, " Nevermore." 

So in this Biblical narrative the raven represents 
the carnal, the worse part of man. 

We have said Noah's raven did not return be- 
cause it found food for itself ; found a world fitted 



104 THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE 

to its needs. The raven here is a striking contrast, 
a foil, in fact, to the dove. When Noah lets loose 
the gentler bird, she flies to and fro and finds no 
rest for the sole of her foot, and no food suited 
to her purer desires; hence she returns to the ark. 
The reason for her return is precisely the same as 
the raven's reason for remaining outside the ark. 
It is a world unfitted for a dove — this world of 
fetid waters, of abominable odors, of floating dead 
bodies. There is no green tree, not even a rock upon 
which she may rest. She returns to the ark be- 
cause in all that vast wilderness of water she finds 
no congenial spot, no place where her dove-needs 
are met. 

Have we not here a picture of man's faring forth 
from the shelter of God's home, into a world fitted 
more for raven-needs than for dove-needs? There 
are few but have had experience enough to enable 
them to testify to the truth of this. The world 
can satisfy our animal cravings only. No matter 
how truly replete with all that the raven desires, the 
dove nature of man is not and cannot be filled 
therewith. We may particularize as follows: 
Here is a young man who has had some spiritual 
experience and some nurture and growth in grace. 
Going out of the shelter of the home, perhaps from 
one section of the city to another, or from a small 
city to a large one, he thereby leaves the protecting 



THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE 105 



care of his earlier days. He endeavors to supply- 
all the needs of his nature with those things that 
the raven world furnishes. For instance he may be 
successful in his business. He may purchase for 
himself comfortable, even elegant, clothing; he may 
lodge himself in a commodious dwelling place and 
may feast on finest viands. He may add such lux- 
uries as automobiles and yachts. He may go 
further, carrying the religion of sense to its logical, 
or illogical, conclusion: he may plunge into all the 
excesses of the world, adopt for his motto the pagan 
sentiment " Let us eat and drink ; for to-morrow 
we die." But his highest nature will not be satis- 
fied. The world can never give the bliss for which 
he sighs. As truly as the prodigal in the parable 
found it impossible to satisfy his hunger with the 
husks that the swine did eat, so truly is our young 
man unable to fill his heart and soul with the things 
that come solely through the senses. The dove- 
need in him flies to and fro and finds no place for 
the sole of its foot. Grateful should he be to Al- 
mighty God for this weariness of wings which 
drives him back to the ark. Grateful should he 
be that the raven's world furnishes no food that 
satisfies, and no resting place for the spirit. It was 
St Augustine who said " Thou, O God, hast made 
us for Thyself, and our heart is restless within us 
until it rests in Thee." And David sang " As the 



106 THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE 

hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my 
soul after thee, O God." 

Let us now change our underlying metaphor as 
we notice the action of the dove when Noah sends 
her forth a second time. Now she does find a place 
where she could rest. But she returns to the ark 
bringing an olive branch, green and fresh. The 
olive leaf tells that the waters have so far subsided 
that the hills are dry, for olives do not grow on 
the tops of the mountains. It tells too that the grass 
is tender on the hillside, that the trees are shaking 
off the mud and rotted foliage and are clothing 
themselves in new garments of living green. True, 
there is still water enough to float the ark, but per- 
haps some uplands are ready to feed the flocks. 
It is no longer wholly a raven's world. The dove 
might have remained on some sunny mountain 
slope. She may already have found some spot 
where she longed to bring her mate and build her 
nest, where, when her golden couplet should be dis- 
closed, she might croon to them her lullaby. And 
yet she returns. Why? Is it not that she might 
show her gratitude to Noah who had protected 
her in those days when the flood covered the face 
of the world? In the first instance she returned 
because she had no place to put her feet. In the 
second instance she returned to show her gratitude 
to her benefactor. 



THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE 107 

And we owe a debt of gratitude to our Noah, 
Christ, that Pilot of our ark. How prone we are 
to overlook even so small a thing as gratitude! 
Last Sabbath morning many people in this Chris- 
tian city did not so much as consider the thought 
of going to God's house to show their gratitude 
for His protection of them. A short time ago 
King George returned to England in safety 
after his visit to the army in France; special 
services of gratitude to God for His protect- 
ing care were held in the Abbey and in St. Paul's 
Cathedral, as well as in many other churches and 
chapels throughout the British realm. Yet it does 
not occur to tens of thousands of people in Britain 
and in America that the same protection, the same 
Providential care, is over each and every individual 
during each and every moment of his life. Now 
some were kept from the sanctuary by sickness, 
others by legitimate domestic duties; but many 
others failed to come to the house of God to show 
their gratitude, because they felt no gratitude. 
Someone says " Is it only in the house of God that 
this attribute of gratitude can be paid? " Of course 
not, and yet it is true that when one forgets God's 
house for any other than a Providential reason, he 
speedily loses the feeling of gratitude, and there 
is not even a prayer from the most secret place 
of his heart, no sending up of fervent, devout 



108 THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE 



hymns of praise to the Saviour. May we not learn 
a lesson then from the timid and shrinking dove, 
who did not remain away to build her nest but re- 
turned with the olive leaf that she might show to 
Noah her gratitude for his care. 

When the dove is sent forth the third and last 
time she does not return. Our underlying metaphor 
changes again. This time it is not upon some trial 
trip that the dove is sent. She did not return for 
she found the waters gone and everything to her 
heart's desire. We are thinking now of the final 
journey of the soul. Quitting the ark which floats 
upon dark earth-bound seas, the soul wings her 
flight to that ark upon the shining waters of the 
River of Life. When Noah's timid dove returned 
to him, he put out his hand and took her into the 
ark, unto himself. Now at the end of this flight 
of the soul, we hope for, we believe we shall experi- 
ence, the same boon. God, the great Father of 
the human soul, sees the tired spirit winging its 
flight to Him: He reaches out His strong hands, 
and the spirit drops into His fatherly embrace. The 
strong arms eternal close about it, and the world- 
weary spirit, brought into the ark of heaven, is 
at rest. 

Pray God we may, through faith in Jesus and 
after our earthly life has shown our gratitude to 
Him, be received into that world which knows no 



THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE 109 

floods of sorrow, no soul-starving watery wastes of 
deadly despair; but which knows only morning 
songs and sweet light, and our Father's deathless 
love. 



X 



SACRIFICES WHICH COST NOTHING 



"And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely 
buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offer- 
ings unto the Lord, my God, of that which doth cost me 
nothing." — II Sam. 24:14. 

■ 1HE circumstances leading to this avowal are 



both interesting in themselves and necessary 



to an understanding of what follows. The 
David who appears in this passage has traveled 
far from the David who, amid the sheepcotes of 
Bethlehem, was anointed the future king of Israel. 
More than forty-five years have passed. The young 
boy of Jesse's household has met on the field of 
battle the great champion, Goliath. He has been 
called into the presence of King Saul. He has 
succeeded Saul upon the throne. He has experi- 
enced the exultation and the depression which come 
into the life of every public man. He has warred 
and been beaten; he has warred and been success- 
ful. And now, in his old age, the kingdom seems 
serene about him. His battles seem to have been 
all fought and won; his government seems firmly 
established; his crown and his scepter may certainly 
and surely be handed down to his son Solomon. 




110 



SACRIFICES 



111 



During the time that stress and trial and tumult 
were over and about him, we do' not read that 
the king was tempted by the subtle pride and the 
no less subtle self-appraisement which we find in 
the present narrative. It was the time of peace 
which tried his soul. War, rebellion, suffering, sor- 
row, these things may have tried his arms, his 
sword, his brain, even his faith — in a way — but 
it is the time of peace and of plenty, of quietness 
and serenity, which tries his soul. 

As a parallel to the pride which mounts through 
his swelling heart to his brain, we may turn to 
the passage of Daniel where Nebuchadnezzar is 
represented as glorying over the great and beauti- 
ful city of Babylon which he had built. 

His is a splendid, kingly figure as he stalks on 
the walls of his palace and proudly says, "-See 
this great Babylon which I have built." The wrath 
of God was stirred against Nebuchadnezzar and, 
even according to the prophecy uttered by Daniel, 
he came upon his knees and hands for seven years 
and went through the most humiliating experiences 
that a king might know. This is not the sequel 
to the story of David's pride, but it illustrates the 
attitude of his spirit when he looked abroad over 
the rich lands and fertile fields of his kingdom. 
From Dan to Beersheba, and from the rising of 
the sun to the going down of the same it was a 



112 



SACRIFICES 



great and prosperous land. On a thousand hills 
cattle grazed and sheep browsed; in a thousand 
valleys and on a thousand meadows were there vis- 
ible and tangible evidences of the wealth of his 
people. And, moreover, there was a feeling of 
parental pride that he could hand down to his son 
such a magnificent kingdom and such a royal throne. 
Here is where we get to the mainspring of his 
motives. Here we understand the real secret of the 
sinfulness of his action. He ordered a census to 
be taken ; not a census of the entire population, men, 
women and children, but a census of those already 
prepared for war and those of military age. It is 
not difficult to understand the meaning of all this. 
When kings and governors begin to count their 
soldiers and look with eyes of swelling pride upon 
their battalions it can mean only one thing, 
namely, that such governors are trusting in the 
might and power of the sword. Among heathen 
races we should not be surprised, but in a man of 
David's spiritual and religious heritage, one who had 
tasted and seen the great things of God, we are 
amazed to find that he, too, falls into the error of 
trusting in the sword. " Some," said he, in one of 
his songs, " trust in chariots, and some in horses : 
but we will remember the name of the Lord our 
God." Pity this splendid verbal faith should not be 
now the motive of his life's action! 



SACRIFICES 



113 



When David forgot that it is " not by might, nor 
by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts," 
he also had a direct commandment which should 
have warned him against falling into this sin of 
pride and numbering the people. In the Thirtieth 
Chapter of Exodus, verses 11-16, Jehovah had given 
command to His people that if they should take the 
sum of the children of Israel according to their 
number, then should they give every man a ran- 
som for his soul unto the Lord . . . that there be 
no plague among them." It had been foreseen by 
the Divine Lawgiver that, if Israel was to ful- 
fill her destiny among the nations, she must fulfill 
that destiny in God's Might and Power, she must 
trust in Him and not in her own strength. Where- 
fore the command making it obligatory, if the 
census is to be taken, to pay a ransom for each 
soul lest a plague be sent upon Israel. David 
knew this, and if his eyes had not been dazzled 
by the brilliancy of earthly greatness he would cer- 
tainly have known before, as well as afterwards, the 
sinfulness of numbering Israel in this proud and 
boastful way. 

One is moved to admire the distinguished cap- 
tain of the king's hosts, Joab, who rebuked his 
lord, the king, in so far as he was able under the 
manners and customs of an absolute monarchy, for 
yvt read that Joab said, " Now the Lord thy God 



114 SACRIFICES 

add unto the people, how many soever they be, an 
hundredfold, and that the eyes of my lord the king 
may see it: but why doth my lord the king de- 
light in this thing?" The penetrating Joab saw 
that the king delighted in that sort of thing, and 
in so far as it was possible he endeavored to bring 
the king to an understanding of the sinfulness of 
such an action. Notwithstanding his rebuke, the 
king's word prevailed and Joab and the other cap- 
tains of the host went out from the presence of the 
king to number the people of Israel. 

Nine months and twenty days went they through- 
out the land. It was a great task, but it was finally 
accomplished and the report was made to the still 
proud king that there were in Israel eight hundred 
thousand valiant men that drew the sword, and 
that the men of Judah were five hundred thou- 
sand. After the numbers were reported to him, 
the record is that " David's heart smote him . . . 
and David said unto the Lord, I have sinned greatly 
in that I have done: and now, O Lord, I beseech 
thee, take away the iniquity of thy servant; for I 
have done very foolishly." 

It may strike us in these modern days as quite 
singular that there should be any sinfulness at- 
tached to the numbering of the hosts of Israel. 
These reasons are at least twofold : 

First, that such numbering was divinely forbid- 



SACRIFICES 



115 



den in the law delivered through Moses, except 
under given conditions, and with circumstances 
which in this case were not complied with. 

And, second, the pride of heart, the self-reliance, 
the reliance upon human might and power, rather 
than upon the might and power of the Spirit of 
God. 

In passing, we may very well inquire, I think, 
whether such a thing has any bearing upon condi- 
tions and circumstances in the modern church of 
God. Let us never forget that, spiritually, we are 
the Israel of God, and that Jesus Himself affirmed 
that not one jot or one tittle of the ancient law 
should pass away till all should be fulfilled. I take 
it therefore that it is at least suggestive to us, this 
sin of numbering Israel, of certain weak places, if 
not actually of certain sins, in the modern church. 
Thus, take my own church : One seldom sits through 
a session of presbytery, synod, or assembly, that his 
ears are not constantly filled with that resounding 
phrase, so dear apparently to our clergy and laity, 
" The Great Presbyterian Church." At a recent 
meeting of presbytery during one hour there were 
more than one-half -dozen times when this exact 
phrase was used. Not only do we glory in what we 
call " The Great Presbyterian Church," but I won- 
der if we have not gone a little too far in our num- 
ber ings and countings of the heads in Israel. Each 



116 



SACRIFICES 



year every church in the entire communion is re- 
quested, nay, required, to report to the General As- 
sembly the exact number of communicants served 
on its rolls; the number received on confession of 
faith; the number accepted from other folds. We 
make detailed and minute reports concerning our 
gifts to the Boards and charitable institutions of 
the church and the community. We have gone 
further than this. We have a pagan way of estimat- 
ing the strength of the church by the numbers on 
its rolls. In even a more pagan way we scan care- 
fully the financial columns opposite to the names 
of the churches and we reckon that a great and 
good church which gives large sums to the vari- 
ous Boards, and of course, therefore, we reckon 
that to be a weak church which gives small sums. 
We have been logical and have gone still further. 
We have proceeded to measure the spiritual 
impact not only of the church but of the minis- 
ter of that church upon his community and 
his day and generation by this fictitious, this un- 
godly standard of figures, of numbers on church 
rolls, of dollars contributed to the various agencies, 
and that man is considered a great man among 
the captains of the hosts of modern Israel, whose 
people are very numerous, or very wealthy, and very 
generous. One would stultify himself to under-rate 
the work necessary in order that a congregation may 



SACRIFICES 



117 



be built up in numbers, and even more so, would 
he stultify himself to under-rate the need of liber- 
ality in our congregations. All glory and praise to 
those strong churches who can and do give largely 
of their means and substance, but it is certainly 
worth the while of every one of our churches to re- 
member the sin committed by David in numbering 
the people of Israel. 

When his heart within him had oriented itself 
in some measure at least and David perceived the 
sinfulness of his action, God sent His prophet, Gad, 
to David. It was a startling message which Gad 
spoke to the king : " Thus saith the Lord, I offer 
thee three things; choose thee one of them, that I 
may do it unto thee. . . . Shall seven years of 
famine come unto thee in thy land ? or wilt thou flee 
three months before thine enemies, while they pur- 
sue thee? or that there be three days' pestilence in 
thy land? now advise, and see what answer I shall 
return to him that sent me." 

Now the real David, the true David, the David 
who was a man after God's own heart, the David 
who, when his sin was pointed out to him, always 
repented, showed his spiritual greatness in his ulti- 
mate reliance upon God in his reply. David said 
unto Gad, " I am in a great strait : let us fall now 
into the hand of the Lord ; for his mercies are great : 
and let me not fall into the hand of man." Having 



118 



SACRIFICES 



thus wisely refused to choose what punishment 
should be meted out to him David continues to re- 
pent of this sinfulness of his heart, and when the 
Spirit of God stretches out the hand of pestilence, 
and when the wails of sorrow and distress and the 
groans of the sick and the dying are arising from 
every part of his kingdom David cries out in despair, 
" Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly : 
but these sheep, what have they done? let thine 
hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my 
father's house." 

Once more comes Gad, the seer, and advises 
David that he must rear an altar and make his 
sacrifice of burnt offering unto the Lord ere the 
sin is forgiven and the affliction of pestilence be 
entirely removed from the land. Then it is that 
the king goes unto Araunah, owner of the threshing 
floor, where Gad has said the altar shall be built. 
In a princely way, befitting one king speaking to 
another, Araunah offers his threshing floor unto 
his king, free of all cost. Then comes from David's 
lips that noble expression which forms the words 
of our text to-day, that expression which was true 
not only for David, but for every other one who, in 
the course of human history, would truly repent of 
sinful ways ; yea, which is true to this very moment 
and which may be called " the worthlessness of 
cheap repentance." " I will not offer unto the Lord, 



SACRIFICES 



119 



my God," said David, " sacrifices which cost me 
nothing." We are not concerned with the amount 
paid for the threshing floor. We are concerned 
only with the fact that it was bought and paid for 
with a price. Thereon was erected the altar and 
on the altar were laid the burnt offerings, and upon 
this occasion, as upon others, the aged king might 
have cried out, in the words of his own Psalm, " The 
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : a broken and a 
contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise," and 
when he had paid the price of money for the land, 
and of a broken and a contrite heart for the altar, 
he may have completed his song with those familiar 
words, " Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacri- 
fices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole 
burnt offering." 

Again let us see what is the bearing of this action, 
prayer, and sacrifice on David's part in the life of 
our modern Israel or even of the modern world in 
general. It may be laid down as a principle that the 
world has nothing to give to him who has not some 
price to pay. We are so often eager to get some- 
thing for nothing; we are allured by advertisements 
which paint an approximation to this something for 
nothing. This, that, the other, is marked as being 
below cost, and for sale at half-price, or less. So 
common is this in our current life that we have not 
stopped to analyze the underlying fallacy of the 



120 



SACRIFICES 



whole thing. And I greatly fear that this insidious 
and destructive heresy is laying its withering blight 
upon us in more ways than that which is first sug- 
gested by the text. For a moment or two, and 
purely for a convenient mode of speech, let us adopt 
pagan terminology, and let us speak of success as a 
god. It is true that the god Success requires that 
the price be paid for offerings made unto him; 
likewise the god Learning, or the god Mammon 
even. In fact, it makes no difference what be the 
false deity man has decided to build his altar before, 
that deity refuses absolutely to accept an offering 
which has cost nothing; no success is attained until 
the price has been paid. 

Young man, young woman, the world is be- 
fore you. It has many rich prizes, as worldly 
things go. There is honor, there is trust, there are 
houses and lands and titles and dignities. You may 
take your choice and if you will pay the price, bar- 
ring all accidents and early death, you may have 
what you pay for; but without the price you cannot 
have it. You may have grasped the appearance 
thereof to find that it is a shadow, a mirage, nothing 
tangible, nothing real. I love the well-worn story 
of young Ptolemy and his preceptor. The high- 
spirited young prince remonstrated with Euclid be- 
cause it was necessary for him to study and work so 
hard in order for him to acquire the rudiments of 



SACRIFICES 



121 



mathematics. You remember Euclid's reply, — 
" There is no royal road to Geometry." There is, 
my friend, no royal road to Anywhere. Royalty, 
itself, as the world calls royalty, pays the same price 
for its true possessions that the meanest butcher's 
son in all the realm must pay. In college I knew two 
brothers. I cannot say they were of equal talents, 
for that I do not know, but they were of equal 
parentage, of course, and of equal opportunity, and 
so far as external things were concerned of equal 
incentive. One led his classes and graduated with 
the highest honors and is to-day a very successful 
man. The other failed in his studies because he did 
not work, finally dropped out of college before 
graduation, and I do not know what has become of 
him. 

Now the lesson for us is that there is no at- 
tainment of spiritual success unless one pays the 
price. We are familiar with the old song, 

"Jesus paid it all, 
All to Him I owe," 

and as a theological proposition I should not care to 
dispute that the debt we owed for our sins was paid 
on the cross once and for all, for you and for me. 
I believe that. But there is something else I must 
also believe. Apostle Paul speaks of entering into 
" the fellowship of his sufferings," and in another 



122 



SACRIFICES 



place, he says that we are " partakers of the suf- 
ferings," " for as the sufferings of Christ abound in 
us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ." 

This heresy that the sacrifice which costs nothing 
may be just as acceptable as one which costs our all 
has got hold of the popular heart, so that to-day re- 
ligion contains little or no elements of renunciation. 
Men unite with the church, they make a formal pro- 
fession of their faith in Jesus Christ, they undertake 
the solemn obligation to " live a godly, righteous, 
and sober life," and too often they go out from 
the church doors unchanged as to motives, pur- 
poses, or actions in life. 

We even resent any imputation that our religion 
should cost anything. To begin with the lowest of 
cost, how few are willing, actually, to pay their part 
towards the financial obligations of a modern 
church? How can they expect that their sacrifices, 
so called, will amount to anything when they do 
not cost anything? And then how often it is true 
men consider that when they have paid a few 
dollars they have paid all that is required of them ! 
That there should be any sacrifice of ease on their 
part in so small a thing, for instance, as attending 
the second service on the Sabbath or the mid-week 
prayer meeting is not to be thought of — far less, of 
subjecting themselves to the rigors of the stormy 
winter or the heat of the summer day. Could such 



SACRIFICES 



123 



easy-going Christians once enter into the real suf- 
ferings of Jesus, the heart-throbbings and the blood 
sweatings of Gethsemane, the indignity and shame 
and pain of Pilate's Judgment Hall, the torture and 
horror and moaning of the cross, the vast heart- 
breaking sigh, as He yielded up the ghost, it seems to 
me that it would shame the one who could not risk a 
few drops of rain, a few flakes of snow, or even a 
few degrees of torrid heat at least one day in the 
week to render thanksgivings to God and make the 
sacrifice of a humble and contrite heart unto Him. 

I have often seen professing Christians who, 
having embarked upon the Christian life as upon 
some holiday excursion, believing, apparently, that 
the church is a Pullman Palace Car in which they 
are to be carried without jerk or jolt or incon- 
venience beyond the terminal station of Death, 
and into the City Eternal, have bitterly resented 
some sudden sorrow that has swept over their souls. 
Loss of property, malignings of enemies, the 
defection of a brother or friend, calamity, disap- 
pointment, death, — one or several of these have 
come to shock their placid lives, and they have cried 
out in anguish and resentment, because they have 
been asked to pay this price for the sacrifice which 
they have laid upon the altar. 

One final word: It would not be giving this 
wonderful text a fair treatment if we did not turn 



124 



SACRIFICES 



the phraseology about and have it refer not to the 
price which man pays in the sacrifices he gives to 
God, but rather have it refer to the price which 
God paid in the sacrifice which He made for the sins 
of the world. 

That sacrifice on Calvary! Think you it cost 
nothing? It is an old but still a beautiful phrase 
that God emptied heaven of its richest treasures in 
order that He might pay that wonderful sacrifice. 
We do not know all there is in this unplumbed, 
unmeasured universe, in the outlying, far-distant 
quarters of the Cosmos, beyond the swing and sweep 
of our farthest satellite. Out where other suns burn 
in those mighty deeps, there may be worlds each one 
of which is some perfect jewel, a beryl, a chrysolite, 
a pearl. Without any cost the Eternal God could 
turn a thousand worlds of gold and precious gems 
into a burning, storm-swept surface of some huge, 
superheated sun, as a sacrifice, but it would have 
cost Him nothing. But when the Only-Begotten 
Son of the Father denuded Himself of His 
Eternal Glory for a time, to be born of a woman in 
the lowly ranks of this world, to suffer heat and 
thirst and cold and hunger, to be misunderstood and 
to be scoffed at, to be jeered, to be falsely con- 
demned, to be crucified, it was indeed a price which 
He paid far beyond all the wealth of all the worlds 
that sweep through this infinity. 



SACRIFICES 



125 



Should not all this make us humble to-day in the 
presence of God, and should it not impel us to make 
the confession of our lips and hearts the thought 
spoken long ago by David, king of Israel, " I will 
not offer unto the Lord, my God, a sacrifice which 
costs me nothing " ? 



XI 



THE LAME PRINCE OF THE HOUSE OF 
SAUL 

"And Ziba said unto the king, Jonathan hath yet a son, 
which is lame on his feet." — II Sam. 9 : 3. 

THE words are spoken of Mephibosheth. On 
that terrible and tragic day when Saul and 
Jonathan had perished on the battlefield at 
Gilboa there had been horror and dismay at the 
king's palace when the news was told. Among those 
who fled in great haste, was a nurse who took with 
her the five-year-old son of Prince Jonathan. It 
seems that as she fled down the stairway she fell 
and dropped the little lad. Probably both of his 
ankles were broken. In the disordered state of 
affairs, occasioned by the death of his father and 
grandfather, there was no one to see that his broken 
limbs were set. Nature did her best, and knitted the 
bones together, but alas ! the little fellow was lamed 
for life. 

At a later period when King David was well 
established upon his throne, he undertook, in some 
measure, to right the wrongs done to the house of 

126 



THE LAME PRINCE 



127 



Saul. He made specific inquiry, " Is there yet any 
that is left of the house of Saul, that I may show 
him kindness for Jonathan's sake ? " In reply to 
his question an old servant was found who told the 
king " Jonathan hath yet a son which is lame on his 
feet." The king asked where he might be found 
and Ziba, the servant, replied, " He is in the house 
of Machir, the son of Ammiel in Lo-debar." David 
had him brought from this house into his royal 
presence. The record is that Mephibosheth, for 
such was his name, fell on his face and did obeisance. 
It is even possible that he feared the king would 
put him to death. None the less he offers him- 
self, " Behold thy servant ! " To allay any fears 
he may have had, David said, " Fear not : for I will 
surely show thee kindness for Jonathan thy father's 
sake, and will restore thee all the land of Saul thy 
father; and thou shalt eat bread at my table con- 
tinually." So astonished was Mephibosheth that he 
cried in his burst of gratitude of humility, " What 
is thy servant, that thou shouldst look upon such a 
dead dog as I am ? " The king immediately gave 
orders that all the property which had formerly be- 
longed to King Saul, and all his house, should be 
turned over to Mephibosheth, the son of his be- 
loved Jonathan. Servants were ordered to turn 
over to Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan, the fruits 
of their labors, for they were ordered to till the 



128 



THE LAME PRINCE 



lands for him and gather and put into storehouses. 
" But," said he, " Mephibosheth thy master's son 
shall eat bread alway at my table." It was done as 
the king ordered and the record is that " Mephibo- 
sheth dwelt in Jerusalem : for he did eat continually 
at the king's table." But it is added lest one forget, 
that " he was lame on both his feet." 

We should say, therefore, that this lameness plays 
a considerable part in the attitude of David to 
Mephibosheth. It is true that he was accused at a 
later date of disloyalty to the king, but he succeeded 
in disproving this disloyalty, and we may very well 
believe that down to the end of life they lived in 
peace and harmony. Now this right royal deed was 
done for Mephibosheth by David for more reasons 
than one. Primarily, he was the son of David's 
most beloved friend. Again, he was the grandson, 
or in the Jewish speech, the son of Saul, whose king- 
dom David ruled, though by the laws of primogeni- 
ture this Mephibosheth might very well have been 
considered the heir to the throne, since Jonathan 
like Saul was dead. But undoubtedly, in addition 
to this reason when David met him face to face, 
personal reasons became very powerful, and his in- 
tellectual grace, his humility, his apparent weak- 
ness from his lameness, all these things appealed to 
the chivalry in the heart of David. Wherefore for 
his own sake, as well as for Jonathan's, this lame 



THE LAME PRINCE 129 

prince profited from the generous mood of David. 

i. Mephibosheth profited by David's love for 
Jonathan. Had it not been for that love, it is doubt- 
ful whether he would ever have made inquiry con- 
cerning the house of Saul. He could not but recall 
that when he, a country lad, first came up to Jeru- 
salem, it was not with sullen face, or with jealousy, 
that the young prince had looked upon him, but the 
record is that when Jonathan saw David, his soul 
was knit to the soul of David and they loved 
each other with a love of surpassing purity and 
beauty. After Gilboa, when David had been 
seated upon the throne, in the first flush of 
his great power and dignity, he seems to have 
thought little about this friend of former days, 
whose life had ended so tragically. Now, how- 
ever, when he had some time for reflection, the 
memory of the old and beautiful days rose before 
him. The memory of the first caress of the eye, 
of the first clasp of the hand, of their touching 
friendship, and then of that day when Jona- 
than was brought home dead — all these memories 
crowded in upon him. Again he felt the poignant 
pain of loss; again he lifted up his voice in that 
olden, golden wail, " Saul and Jonathan were lovely 
and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they 
were not divided." These memories urged upon 
him the beauty, as well as the duty of gratitude, and 



130 



THE LAME PRINCE 



emphasized in his mind the royalty of loyalty to the 
memory of friends. Hence his inquiry and hence 
his reinstatement of Mephibosheth. Now as it was 
not primarily for Mephibosheth's sake, but rather 
for Jonathan's, that David took him up, so it is 
not for our sakes alone, that God provides all the 
gifts of grace for us. Indeed we may consider 
ourselves, in more aspects than one, pictured in this 
chapter and story by the lame prince. For however 
crippled, however poor, however much an outcast 
any one of us may be, he is none the less still of 
royal blood, and he is none the less commended to 
the eternal mercy and love of the great Over-Father, 
with all the blessings which are entailed in His 
love for Christ the Son, and our Friend. Let 
us therefore accustom ourselves to thinking that 
though there may be worth and dignity on our part, 
in that we are princes, still it is true that the great 
kindness in our behalf is made for Christ's sake. 
He Himself has said, " Whatsoever ye shall ask in 
my name, that will I do." God remembers Christ 
and the cross, and His honor is involved in giving 
us that high estate which we should have. 

2. Mephibosheth profited by the fact that his 
needs were very great. He was exceedingly poor. 
He was a pensioner in the house of Machir ben- 
Ammiel. No doubt Machir was a loyal friend to 
the late king and all that king's family. There is 



THE LAME PRINCE 



131 



no particular evidence, however, that Machir was a 
man of high standing or of large estate, and the 
greatness of Mephibosheth's need is intensified by 
the fact that he was a scion of royalty. Rest 
assured that the members of that household had 
not permitted him to grow into manhood without 
being told the splendid as well as mournful his- 
tory of Saul. Rest assured that he had been 
told again and again, "If you had your rights 
you would be sovereign of these people." Rest as- 
sured that he had as a youth dreamed of the day 
when the hosts of Israel could place themselves 
at his command, and when he would wrest the 
throne from the usurper. Doubtless he had had 
engendered in his heart what amounted to bitter 
hatred of the warlike king, a usurper, he considered, 
of his own place. The days went by, weeks, months 
and years and no loyal body of troops came to place 
themselves at his command. He remained lonely 
and forsaken, an outcast, pauper prince. His need 
was very great. Moreover he was lame. If he 
could only have bestirred himself, as a man of strong 
and straight limbs might have done, it is possible 
he could have incited men to follow his standard; 
but alas! he could not so much as walk, or work 
for his living. He must stay in the house of Machir, 
he must though it choke him eat the bread of beg- 
gary and devour at the same time his own heart. 



132 



THE LAME PRINCE 



Now in the midst of these great needs a messenger 
arrived, a messenger from David, the king. A sum- 
mons to the royal presence! What did it mean? 
In spite of his hatred and his fear we do not 
doubt that there crept into his heart such a thought 
as this, " Now doubtless these great needs of mine 
shall be met.' , He crawled into the presence of 
King David, torn between hope and fear, and the 
first word the king spoke was the pronunciation of 
his name, " Mephibosheth. ,, Tremblingly and yet 
proudly he answered, " Behold thy servant ! " 
David calmed his fears at once. " Fear not : for 
I will surely show thee kindness for Jonathan thy 
father's sake." A man of keen insight, and of clear 
unbiased judgment, we feel sure that David at a 
flash comprehended the great need of Mephibosheth 
and determined at once, not only for Jonathan's 
sake but for the sake of Mephibosheth himself, in 
his vast needs, what he would do. 

Again we say this is a picture of ourselves. How 
vast are our needs! How deep, how wide, how 
lofty, how unfathomable this human heart! Some- 
thing tells that we are princes in exile, and that the 
food which that earth-home to which we have been 
exiled can give us is in no sense comparable to the 
longings and wishes of our natures that somewhere 
there is a patrimony, an inheritance reserved for us; 
and in the midst of this our huge overwhelming 



THE LAME PRINCE 133 

want, our vast incalculable need, our God sends His 
messenger to us, exiled and beggared princes, and 
for Christ's sake as well as for the sake of the great 
need of us, says, " Come into that inheritance 
prepared for you from the foundation of the 
<* world." It was Paul who exclaimed, " My God 
shall supply all your need." 

3. Mephibosheth profited by his humility. To 
our modern ears there may be the sound of insin- 
cerity, of affectation, in the words with which 
Mephibosheth named himself. " What is thy serv- 
ant," he cried, " that thou shouldst look upon such 
a dead dog as I am ? " It was not a mere figure of 
speech of Mephibosheth. He was himself as noth- 
ing but a poor wretched outcast, unsupported and 
lame. In proportion to the great indignation and 
sense of injustice which had lived in his heart so 
long, he now swept to the opposite extreme. He 
thought not that he should be indignant at being so 
poorly treated, not that he should be angry at King 
David for usurping his rights, but rather he felt his 
unworthiness even so much as to stand upright in 
the presence of his sovereign, anointed of God and 
ruling the people of Israel. What could he, Mephi- 
bosheth, lame and weak, have done on the battlefield 
where David had won victories in the name of the 
Lord of Hosts? What kind of figure would he, 
broken and lame, have made in that palace and on 



134 THE LAME PRINCE 

that throne which the kingly figure of David was so 
splendidly adorning? What kind of music would 
the heart-sore Mephibosheth have given to the people 
for those victories and those paeans of praise, which 
David had given them, when his royal fingers swept 
the lyre? The fitness of his king and the unfitness 
of himself were plain and clear ; he felt now that he 
could go back to his obscurity in quiet humility. 
" Thy servant," said he, " is as a dead dog." Why 
should the king look upon such as he? The king 
stooped and lifted him tenderly, embraced him for 
Jonathan's sake, kissed his forehead, betokening 
that he recognizes him as of the royal household, 
and said, " Whatever honors and emoluments be- 
longed to your father's house, these shall be yours 
and your children's forever; but as for you, royal 
child of my beloved Jonathan now long dead, you 
shall eat your bread at the king's table in the king's 
palace from this day and henceforth." His humility 
had purchased this great exaltation. Any rude, 
crude, selfish struttings and demands would have 
hardened the heart of David, and the words of 
Mephibosheth applied to himself in humility would 
have been applied by others in contempt and curse. 
And now instead of being called a dead dog, he was 
praised, and clothed in garments of worth, and 
sat at the table of the king. 

Whatever may be our feelings or our thoughts 



THE LAME PRINCE 



135 



with respect to our worth or our deserts, or the high 
station we should have, when we stand in the pres- 
ence of God humility sweeps over us like the waves 
of a mighty sea, and we feel like falling down on 
our faces and crying, " What are thy servants but 
dead dogs ! " " What is man, that thou art mindful 
of him ? " or the sons of men that Thou shouldst 
visit them! 

Job in his day rolled forth sonorous words 
concerning man's worth and dignity. He hurled 
questions into the heavens as to the right of God 
to punish man; but when God Almighty had ap- 
peared to Job he bowed his head in shame and in 
humility. " I have heard of thee by the hearing of 
the ear," he says in awed tones, " but now mine eye 
seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent 
in dust and ashes." But this humility as in the 
case of Mephibosheth, as in the case of Job, is the 
first step to that dignity which comes to the children 
of God. It is stooping to place one's foot upon the 
lower-most stone of that stairway which leads to 
His great throne. 

Ah, yes, friends, like poor Mephibosheth we are 
princes exiled from our father's house. Our needs 
are overwhelming in proportion to the dignity and 
worth of our souls, and we are lame and need help 
along life's roadway, but let us never doubt that we 
shall some day stand in humility and awe in God's 



136 



THE LAME PRINCE 



presence, and that He shall give us that position 
which means that we shall go out no more, neither 
hunger nor thirst any more, but that the Lamb 
shall feed us, and shall lead us to fountains of 
living water, and we shall sit at the king's banquet 
forever. 



XII 



STREAMS IN THE DESERT 

"In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams 
in the desert"— - Isa. 35:6. 

WHAT would the world be without water? 
Vegetables are from five-sixths to nine- 
tenths water. Animals, too, are mainly 
composed of water, though the proportions vary. 
Since our own bodies are mostly water, we can 
exist without food for a number of days, if we 
have plenty of liquids to drink; but to be deprived 
of water for even a few hours would cause torture 
intolerable. To have nothing liquid for a few days 
would result in death. Without water, earth would 
indeed be a sterile promontory. 

In olden' days Egypt was the granary of the 
world. In still more ancient times that f ertile land 
was but a part of the great Libyan desert. Herod- 
otus says, " Anyone who sees Egypt, without hav- 
ing heard a word about it before, must perceive, if 
he has only common powers of observation, that the 
Egypt to which the Greeks go in their ships is an 
acquired country, the gift of the river.' ' Ages upon 

137 



138 STREAMS IN THE DESERT 

ages the northeast of Africa, from the Red Sea on 
the east to the Atlas Mountains on the northwest, 
was one vast desert. South of this desert country, 
in the regions of equatorial Africa, the rainfall 
was tremendous. Great inland lakes, of which 
Victoria Nyanza is the largest remaining body, 
formed here. Their outlet was no doubt largely 
into the Indian Ocean, but partly through what 
is now called the Kongo into the Atlantic. In 
one of those processes of change in the conforma- 
tion of the land surface of the earth, a range of 
mountains was thrown between this watered region 
and the Indian Ocean, and a smaller range of hills 
diminished the outlet to the Atlantic. A great body 
of water burst out to the north, threaded its way 
through the valleys, cutting down barriers, leaping 
precipices, and finally, gliding through the eastern 
end of the Libyan desert, entered the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. This was the Nile. Having cut its 
channel the great river flowed within its banks dur- 
ing certain months of the year, and established its 
custom of an annual overflow. Nomadic tribes 
from the desert, peoples from the south country and 
from Asia, perceiving that the river would make a 
garden spot, built their cities, towns, and villages 
along its banks, and in time there was Egypt. 
Water had rescued the Libyan desert from sterility 
and had made Egypt a marvel of fertility. 



STREAMS IN THE DESERT 139 

In the western part of our United States is what 
is called the Great Basin. It comprises parts of the 
present states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, 
Nevada, Idaho and Utah. There are more than i 
two hundred millions of acres which, until very- 
recent times, were as sterile as Sahara. These con- 
prised the Great American Desert. Now, deserts are 
not always level sandy plains. In fact they seldom 
are. The Great American Desert contains moun- 
tains, and is surrounded by still loftier ones. In 
fact, the explanation of the American Desert lies in 
the arrangement of the mountain systems. Winds 
from the east are robbed by the Appalachian high- 
land, and pour the rest of their riches into the Mis- 
sissippi valley. Winds from the southeast are 
drained of their moisture by the Rocky Mountains. 
Winds from the west are milked by the Sierra 
Nevada and the Cascade ranges. Highlands of the 
Rocky Mountain system to the north, and highlands 
of the same system and the Sierra Madre to the 
south, shut in the great basin so that rains are 
practically unknown. But within recent years more 
than ten million acres, or one-twentieth of the entire 
sterile country has been reclaimed, and the rec- 
lamation consisted in one process — bringing water 
to the ground. Irrigation, in a desert country, 
means reclamation. 

The world cries out for water. Drought means 



140 STREAMS IN THE DESERT 

death. The Ancient Mariner told how his ship 
drifted in the open sea, no wind stirring the sail. 
His words are a picture of death from thirst. 
There the men lie on the deck, gasping for breath, 
their lips and tongues swollen, and their bodies 
withered, emaciated. The mariner sleeps and 
dreams that rain falls, and he awakens to find his 
dream is true. A few draughts of fresh water 
restore him to life. 

We are so used to water that we underrate its 
value. When we complain of the heavy rains, we 
do not think what they mean to the world. Water 
means the grass of the meadows upon which sheep 
and the cattle upon a thousand hills must graze. 
Water means the forest with its waving boughs 
and its grateful shade. Water means the 
fruit, the golden globes of the orange tree, the 
blushing crimson of the apple and peach. Water 
means the seas of wheat, their beautiful bil- 
lows swaying under the summer wind. Water 
means stately and musical rows of green Indian 
corn, singing stories of happy homes crowded with 
bright-eyed children whose red lips they shall feed. 
Water means life : life in flower, life in bird, life 
in beast, life in man! 

Were there some all-powerful demon who desired 
to destroy every trace of life on our planet and to 
destroy it with the greatest torture imaginable, that 



STREAMS IN THE DESERT 141 

demon, emerging from the black Tartarean realms 
of death, would stretch his mighty power over the 
surface of the earth, and, with his hot breath, would 
suck up every drop of moisture and leave the ground 
dry. The ships would be stranded amidst dead and 
decaying fishes on what is now the bottom of the 
great seas. The lakes would be beds of parching 
dust. The rivers would be trails of treeless sands 
and arid rocks. The springs and fountains would 
cease to bubble. No water would leap over the 
shining rocks of the hillside. Drooping birds and 
moaning beasts and wailing children and men and 
women with parched and bleeding lips would be 
crying to God for water. It would be death ! 

Now, what water is to the physical world, the 
water of life, the water of God's love, is to the 
moral world, to the spiritual world. If nine-tenths 
of all living things is water, one might say that 
ninety-nine one-hundredths of all the fruits of the 
spirit are borne by the Spirit in a world that would 
otherwise be morally sterile. 

What a wonderful picture is that in the last 
chapter of the Apocalypse where the aged John in 
his vision sees " a pure river of water of life, clear 
as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God 
and of the Lamb." This river sends its invisible, 
soul-blessing streams into the earth's moral deserts, 
and they become fragrant, beautiful, fruitful. 



142 STREAMS IN THE DESERT 

We call the benevolent man " humane." The 
history of humanity does not warrant the use of the 
term. Many a poet before the time of Burns could 
have sung " Man's inhumanity to man makes count- 
less thousands mourn." Without the love of God, 
without divine waters of life flowing into men's 
souls, there is no " humanity." It does not exist. 
" Were there ever times," someone stops to inquire, 
" were there ever times when the world was a moral 
desert? " Yes, there is a picture in an ancient Book 
of an ancient patriarch to whom the voice of God 
came and said, " The end of all flesh is come before 
me; for the earth is filled with violence through 
them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the 
earth." Men had shut out the streams of God's love 
from their hearts, and the earth was corrupt and 
was filled with violence in those days before the 
fountains of the great deep were broken up. 

And then in the days of Elijah, Israel was all but 
a moral desert. The prophet believed there were 
none left through the channels of whose souls still 
flowed the water of life. And God Himself could 
find but seven thousand in all Israel who had not 
bowed the knee to Baal. Then there was that time 
when the young Josiah, at the age of eight, was 
called to reign over Judah. When he had been 
reigning eight years, so wicked were his people, that 
he tore down the temples of Baal, broke their altars 



STREAMS IN THE DESERT 143 



and their images into a thousand pieces and ground 
them to dust. He destroyed the priests of Baal and 
strewed the dust of the images upon their graves. 
He then sent men to investigate the condition of the 
temple, and there, in a secret place, all unused 
perhaps for generations, all covered with dust, all 
stained with time, the priest found a Book of the 
Law of the Lord given by Moses. Josiah's king- 
dom was sterile but this Book opened channels again 
for the water of God to flow. 

It was a sterile time when Jesus came to the 
world. Atheism was everywhere. Men with the 
brain-power of Caesar and Cicero could not accept 
the childish fables concerning the gods who were 
supposed to dwell amidst the clouds on Mount Olym- 
pus, and, since they knew naught of the true God, 
they were atheists. Atheism is drought and 
sterility. It was a sterile time. Fruit of a certain 
kind was being borne, but it was such fruit as one 
might find on the sun-blistered plains or scorched 
mountain slopes of Arizona and New Mexico to- 
day: Spiny cacti, thorns, and scrawny sagebrush, 
but no fruit to feed the bodies, no fruit to feed the 
souls of men. Jesus came at this sterile time and 
poured afresh into the world great streams of the 
water of life, streams that burst out in every direc- 
tion and flowed into every sun-blistered plain and 
every, hell-scorched valley; and everywhere that it 



144 STREAMS IN THE DESERT 



flowed the cactus and the thorn-bush gave place to 
flowers and fruits and golden harvests of grain. 

But because men dammed up the streams of living 
water, or turned them aside into improper channels, 
or walled men off so that they could not drink — 
because of these things sterility came again. Chris- 
tendom was becoming a moral desert in the days 
of the Monk of Wittenberg. Atheists, and worse 
than atheists, sat upon the throne of St. Peter. 
Shrewd, low-lived, and unprincipled women gov- 
erned the church of God, or the church which 
claimed to be of God. Alexander VI, dead at the 
hand of an assassin, fell prone on the steps of St. 
Peter's and was so despised that there was none so 
poor to do him the reverence of a burial. Wicked- 
ness in high places, wickedness in low places ! Only 
thorns and cacti and scrawny brush could grow. 

But the Reformation came and opened channels 
for the flowing of the waters of life again. Once 
more the moral world blossomed as the rose. The 
moral and the spiritual desert is in any part of this 
world where there is not the love of God, where the 
"water of life" does not flow. The fair land in 
which you live is fruitful only in as far as waters 
flow through it. And this fair land, by the same 
token, is a moral desert when God's love is not 
known, when His waters have not quickened men's 
souls. 



STREAMS IN THE DESERT 145 

Each separate soul is fruitful in proportion as 
God's grace flows through his heart. What about 
your soul's garden ? Is it parched and dry ? Bears 
it fruit, or only evil weeds? By their fruits ye 
shall know these gardens. Are they deserts, walled 
in by the mountains of selfishness and of pride, by 
the stony, arid hills of hate? Do they bear thorns 
and thistles, or, as the Apostle names them, evil 
fruits: to wit, wrath, strife, envyings, murders, 
drunkenness, reveling, adultery, uncleanness, hatred ? 
These are indeed the fruits of the Godless, Christless 
life. Or is your life fertile because the mountains 
of pride and selfishness have been overflowed, cut 
down, by the floods of God's boundless love ? Have 
the arid plateaus of your life been watered by the 
tears of Gethsemane? Have the Rockies of hatred 
and the Sierras of pride been leveled by the streams 
from Calvary? Has your parched, fruitless soul 
been flooded from the fountains which gush forth 
on the hills of God ? Then you know what it is for 
the wilderness and the dry land to be glad. You 
know what it is for the desert to rejoice and blos- 
som as the rose. For in your wilderness waters 
have broken out and streams in the bitter desert. 
Everlasting fruitfulness is yours, and everlasting 
joy. 



XIII 

THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 

"Some say thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and 
others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets'' — Matt. 16: 
13-16, verse 14. 

TTTE have an interesting comment here upon 
\ \ the way men looked upon Jesus. It is as 
though we see Him reflected in a mirror. 
Indeed He is reflected here in the mirror of the 
human mind. From these reflections we easily 
perceive that He is not regarded in precisely the 
same light by different men. 

A study of the New Testament reveals the fact 
that there is the widest divergence possible in the 
way different people looked upon Jesus. There is 
the harsh and critical attitude of the official church- 
men of the time. To them He was a breaker of 
all the laws and traditions of the Jewish people. 
Furthermore, we are told, that He was looked upon 
as a blasphemer and an impostor. But still more 
degrading terms, if such were possible, were ap- 
plied to Him. He was called a wine-bibber and a 
glutton, was spoken of as an habitue of nameless 

resorts. It was said of Him that He went with 

146 



THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 147 



kindred spirits when He flocked with publicans and 
harlots. But it is not this wider divergence of 
opinion to which our text calls attention. It is 
rather to a more restricted, a legitimate divergence. 

There was, as we see, a very much wider diver- 
gence of opinion, even in Jesus' own day. It is a 
sad commentary on human bigotry that " His own " 
received Him not; that some of His own even went 
so far as to say He was possessed of a devil. For 
those who denounced Jesus, we have no word of 
explanation; certainly no word of extenuation. For 
those of to-day who are of the contrary part, we 
hold -no brief. But surely we shall not be far 
astray if we say that the differences shown by our 
text are sincere and truly devout differences. 

One loves to think that these opinions were those 
of the masses of Israel, of the bulk of the common 
people. Often the common judgment is more nearly 
correct than that of any class or sect. There is a 
very real sense in which the ancient adage is true : 
vox populi, vox Dei. True the reported opinions 
are not the whole truth, but they are certainly 
nearer to the truth than the hate-inspired epithets 
hurled at Jesus by the fanatical Pharisees. 

So it is not correct to say that public judg- 
ments mirrored by the apostles were false. All those 
who saw in Jesus the power of God which made ! 
them say He was a prophet, were on the right 



148 THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 



road, even if they had not reached the end of the 
way. Their opinions were not false, only incom-. 
plete opinions. For it was not incorrect to com- 
pare Him with the great prophets; to find in Him 
such prophetic powers as to cause the belief that 
He was the reincarnation of Jeremiah, of Elijah, 
of John the Baptist, or of some other holy seer of 
God. The only fault to be found with this opinion 
is that it has not proceeded far enough. It must 
not stop with the recognition of Jesus as one of the 
prophets; it must continue until it makes the con- 
fession of faith which Peter here makes : " Thou art 
the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God." 

As a center around which to group our thoughts, 
let us notice the common element in this difference 
of opinions about Jesus. True, according to Peter 
one group said, " This man, Jesus of Nazareth, is 
Jeremiah come to life again." Another group said, 
"This is not Jeremiah, but Elijah." There was 
another group who said, " You are both wrong, this 
is a reincarnation of John the Baptist," while still 
another group would not commit themselves to 
any one specific prophet, but said, " We do not 
think He is Elijah, or Jeremiah, or Amos, or Moses; 
but we do believe that He belongs to the great order 
and succession of the prophets: the days of the 
prophets have come again. We thought they had 
passed away forever. We thought the last prophet 



THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 149 



who camped on earth had folded his tent when 
Malachi's spirit went back to God ; but we see we are 
mistaken, for another great prophet has arisen 
amongst us, and tabernacles with us for a time." | 
You see the similarity outweighs the dissimilarity. 
The common element of this judgment is that they 
all believe Him a prophet. . 

Now there is something very fascinating to my 
mind in this thought. It leads off into a most 
instructive and uplifting conception of the character 
of Jesus and of His work amongst men. 

That Jesus is not the same in every sense of the 
word to you that He is to me, is due to no vari- 
ableness in His character, no vacillation in His) 
purposes. He Himself is more fixed and constant 
than the northern star. The eloquent author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews says that Jesus Christ is 
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Hence 
when we assert that Jesus is a different Being, in 
some senses, to each of us, we certainly do not 
mean that His character is an insubstantial thing. 
Nor do we mean that He is a projection of the 
brain, or of the personalities of you and of me and 
of everybody; for however interesting is the study 
of such a Jesus as we might conceive He would 
not be that constant quantity which He must be to 
fulfill the requirements of the text, " the same yes- 
terday, and to-day, and for ever," and to fulfill also 



150 THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 



the demands of His saviourship that He should be 

the Saviour of all peoples. But here is the element 

of truth : Jesus is seen in a different way by one man 

from the way He is seen by another, because each 

man is unique in his needs and in his perceptive 

powers. It is a truism that no two men see a 

proposition exactly alike. We do not see each other 

in exactly the same way. The genial Autocrat of 

the Breakfast Table has humorously illustrated this 

fact for us. He tells us that when John and Thomas 

converse, there are no less than three Johns : 

"The real John; known only to his Maker. 
"John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very 
unlike him. 

" Thomas's ideal John ; never the real John, nor John's 
John, but very often unlike either." 

This might be carried on to infinity, for though the 
John whom Dr. Holmes talks about was a real 
person, and his realness a constant thing, still he 
was seen in more or less different ways by every- 
one who looked at him or spoke to him. This is 
what I mean when I say Jesus is not in every way 
the same to you that He is to me. He is the same 
Saviour, the same Lord Christ, rich unto all who 
call upon Him, but my special need is peculiar to 
myself and / find in my Saviour that which meets 
my special need, just as you find in Him that which 
meets your special need. He would be less than He 
is, were this not true. 



THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 151 

See how this thought fits different men, then, 
of one church, or one communion. True there is 
a divergence beyond which no man can go and be 
true to Jesus. Such a divergence would class the 
one diverging with the Pharisees and Scribes, who 
denounced Jesus as an impostor, not with the 
honest general public who had varying beliefs as 
to which prophet Jesus was, or was most like, but 
who still believed that whatever one He resembled 
or reincarnated, He was a prophet and a very great 
one. 

Now within the fold of our church, or of any 
church, there is this legitimate divergence of view 
with regard to Jesus, and it makes for the welfare 
and furtherance of the church. One man presents 
a theological Christ, a Christ who condescends, as 
it were, to save the world. Another presents an * 
intensely human Messiah, yearning and longing to 
save Israel. One is a Matthew fitting Jesus into all 
the traditions of the elders concerning the coming 
of God's Anointed. Another is a Mark, stating 
with conciseness and brevity the tremendous works 
and miracles of Jesus, as if for a Roman, power- 
loving world. Another is a Luke, who sets forth 
an historical Christ, gives in full His genealogy, 
tells of the songs of the angels, relates Jesus to 
Augustus and Tiberius and other potentates of the 
world. A fourth is John, who gives us a philo- 



152 THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 



sophical, a theological Jesus, setting forth His 
divine discourses concerning this great sacrifice 
which He makes. 

The lesson to be learned from this is a lesson 
of forbearance, a lesson of tolerance on our part 
toward those who are honestly and earnestly serv- 
ing Jesus, who acknowledge and love Him as their 
Lord and Saviour, and yet present Him in a more 
for less different way. 

Consider also how beautifully this fits into the 
different branches of the Christian church. Now 
there is very much said about church unity. Per- 
haps we shall go a little further towards church 
federation than we have already gone. Perhaps 
too, the split-up sections of the Presbyterian and 
Reformed churches, for example, will come together 
into an organic unity, as I for one think they should; 
and all the Methodists into another; and all the 
Baptists into another; and so on. But we shall 
never bring all the varying denominations into one 
organic unity. It is neither desired nor desirable. 
For just as individuals differ among themselves in 
their mental characteristics, so also are there groups 
of individuals who are more or less similar and 
who differ from other groups. The apostles said, 
" Some say Jeremiah, others Elijah, and others 
John the Baptist." There are still Jeremiah groups 
and Elijah groups. Jhere are those who can feel at 



THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 153 



home in almost any Christian church, but if I under- 
stand human nature, the majority of men are so 
constituted that one particular church or communion 
would lay stress upon those aspects of Christ and 
of His gospel and His sacraments in a way which 
would appeal, fascinate, hold, uplift, while another 
communion would not. Make it personal : nothing 
would appeal to me less than the routine and for- 
mality of our high church brethren of the Episcopal 
or the Roman fold. That does not by any means 
say that this more formal, more ornate service, is 
wrong. It by no means asserts that this is an in- 
correct way to worship God. There are many 
people, thousands, millions, who find in the ornate, 
formal services the best expression of their ideals 
of worship. Many a devout soul has risen on the 
incense-filled air of a Roman cathedral to the very 
foot of the throne of Christ, and many such persons 4 
would find the barer and more intellectual service 
of a Protestant church lacking in that which is 
most truly helpful to their spiritual life. 

If we believe that God's hand is in history, if we 
believe that He works out His will even amidst the 
crash of wars and the fall of empires, certainly we 
must believe also that His hand is in the history 
of the church, and that even these so-called divisions 
of the church are for His honor and His glory. If 
that is questioned, and if it can be shown that divi- 



154 THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 

sions are a blunder, a mistake, He certainly has 
overruled that blunder and mistake and made them 
minister to His honor and glory. If the Methodist 
church does not quite meet my spiritual needs, does 
not quite show me the Jesus for which my whole 
nature cries out, then perhaps I shall find it in the 
Baptist, the Congregational, or the Presbyterian. 
And if the churches of Protestantism cannot give it 
to me, then perhaps I, or you, or someone might 
even find it in the church of Rome. 

Now what has been said of individuals within one 
communion, and of different communions of the 
Christian church, may be carried further. The 
many-sidedness of Jesus should be considered in 
its relation to nations. His wonderful adaptability 
or adaptation to the ideals, the widest, highest and 
deepest needs of the races, is what makes Chris- 
tianity essentially the missionary religion. Quite 
frequently someone says, " Why isn't it just as 
reasonable for the disciples of Buddha to send mis- 
sionaries to America as for the disciples of Jesus to 
send missionaries to India, China and Japan ? " 
The answer is that Buddha, in so far as he is the 
light to any place, is essentially the light of Asia, 
NOT the Light of the World. His dreamy, mysti- 
cal idealism will not suit, could not be made to 
fit, the hustling, busy pragmatic peoples of the 
West. Nor is it possible for my mind to conceive 



THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 155 



of an adaptation of Buddha and Buddhism to Ger- 
many, France, England, or America. Again there 
is Mohammed: who can fancy a Mohammedan 
civilization, with its disregard of veracity, its lower 
standard of morality, its corrupt family life — who 
can fancy such as this among the Anglo-Saxon 
people ? Or how could one ever make a Frenchman, 
whose eyes are always on the future, and who 
shudders even to look over his shoulder for a 
moment at the black abyss of the past, venerate 
his ancestors and walk with Confucius in the dark- 
ness of the dead ages? Quite otherwise is it with 
Jesus. A nation which loves Buddha and gets light 
from him, will find a greater, a sweeter, a nobler 
Buddha in the person of Jesus. The nation which 
can worship Mohammed will find a mightier prophet 
than Mohammed when it knows Jesus. 

It is therefore easily seen that this many-sidedness 
of Jesus is due not alone to the different eyes and 
different viewpoints of individual men; but also 
that it is a part of His divine adaptability, His 
divine adaptation, to the needs of all men, of all 
races, and all times. He is the universal Son of 
Man — neither Jew nor Greek. He embodies within 
His person the highest ideals of every people: the 
desire of all nations meets its fulfillment in Him. 
The shores of the Yellow Sea are as impressionable 
to His feet as are the sands of Arabia; the Hima- 



156 THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 

layas are as hospitable to His voice, when once it is 
truly heard, as are the Alps or the Alleghanies. 
Hence, He is sure to reign where'er the sun does 
his successive journeys run. 

And now lastly consider for a moment how this 
many-sidedness of Jesus, this adaptability, meets 
our individual needs, in our every-day lives. There 
is no experience possible to us in which Jesus can- 
not and in which He does not double our joys and 
diminish our sorrows. More than St. Paul ever 
was, He is all things to all men. 

Is it that we are tiny children, just beginning to 
look out with wistful eyes upon the long avenues of 
the world? At mother's knee we learn to lisp our 
baby prayers to this Jesus who, once Himself a 
babe, knows our little sorrows better than our 
earthly parents can. 

Is it that we are about to break the home ties? 
Father's husky voice is telling us to walk in the 
Light; and mother's tender kiss is dewy upon our 
forehead as we trudge out to face the world. What 
companion so well-fitted to cheer and comfort us 
as we fare forth on the long road as that Jesus 
whose feet were scarred by the stones of life's 
rough paths while yet the morn and liquid dew of 
youth was about Him? 

Is it a marriage? Are two mornings joining 
themselves in the hope to reach the night together ? 



THE MANY-SIDED JESUS 157 



Jesus was the honored guest at the wedding in Cana 
of Galilee, and he will be, if we permit Him, the 
best-loved, and the most needed guest at our wed- 
dings in Philadelphia, and Chicago, and everywhere 
else. 

But what is it? Has a tiny soul fluttered down 
into our arms, only to spread its wings and flit back 
to God, leaving us to sigh for the touch of a 
flower-soft, baby hand? Who can so soothe as He 
whose seamless robe is by our beds of pain; whose 
tears are our balm; who calms the fretting, storm- 
rent spirit even as He calmed the Sea of Galilee ? 

Are life's loads heavy, as we bear the heat and 
burden of the day? Yonder He stands, just as He 
did in the old Judean days, stretching out His hands 
to the world-weary, to the tired and worn body and 
soul : " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 

Yea, even as we walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death, we fear no evil, because He is with 
us, and His rod and staff comfort us. 

He is beautiful beyond compare to these eyes 
which see as in a glass darkly. What shall He be 
when we behold Him by the white light of the 
throne of God — when we see as we are seen, and 
know as we are known? "We shall see Him as 
He is." And the most marvellous thing is yet to be 
added: "We shall be like Him." 



XIV 



GLORY OF THE CROSS 



" God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of 
our Lord Jesus Christ." — Gal. 6 : 14. 



HE origin of crucifixion as a means of 



punishment is lost in antiquity. It may have 



originated with the Persians. It was known 
to the Phoenicians, and the Chaldeans used some 
such form of punishment. From the Phoenicians 
the Greeks and Romans borrowed it. It was not a 
Jewish custom. Among the Jews it was rather the 
custom to execute the criminal and then hang his 
body on some tree; but crucifixion was unknown to 
them until the days of their Roman subjection. 
Even among the Romans themselves, in their hard- 
est days, the cross was degrading in its significance, 
and only the vilest wretches and criminals, and the 
lowliest slaves, were put to death by such a cruel 
method. Cicero, in his oration against Verres, ac- 
cuses him of a crime that amounted to impiety in 
that he had put Gaius to death by this method. 
He wrung groans from his hearers and drove Verres 
in horror and dismay from the city by describing 




158 



GLORY OF THE CROSS 



159 



this crucifixion as " the most miserable and most 
painful punishment/' also saying, " It is a crime 
to bind a Roman citizen ; to scourge him is a wicked- 
ness; to put him to death is almost parricide; what 
shall I say of crucifying him? So guilty an action 
cannot by any possibility be adequately expressed by 
any name bad enough for it." Yet, when the Lord 
of Glory, the Son of Man, was put to death it was 
in this disgraceful and hideous manner. 

When a Jew who had all of the revulsion of feel- 
ing against this form of punishment that is inherent 
in his race, and a man, too, who was exceedingly 
tender-hearted, declared that he glories in a cross, 
it is a remark worthy of the profoundest considera- 
tion. How could he, how anyone, how could you 
and I to-day, glory in such a thing ? Can we glory 
because we rejoice that a man has been put to death ? 
Can we glory because that death was undeserved? 
Can we glory because that undeserved death was 
given in the most cruel form? It is for none of 
these superficial reasons that Paul could glory, and 
it is for none of them that you and I can glory in the 
cross to-day. But he gloried and we glory through 
the meaning of the cross to humanity. The cross 
itself, without the Divine sacrifice upon it, has no 
meaning in your life and in mine, as it had none in 
the great Apostle's, but the cross as the emblem of a 
divinely wrought salvation, a divinely sent Savior, 



160 GLORY OF THE CROSS 

and a divinely accepted sacrifice, is the cause of 
Paul's glorying, and the cause of the Christian's 
glorying to-day. 

There are four elements in this great change that 
has taken place which we shall notice — this change 
which made so hideous a thing become the most 
admired, which has made the most terrible form 
of death become the symbol of life. 

First: It was an instrument of pain. Now it is 
the symbol of triumph over pain. In this there 
is cause for glorying. How the world has suffered 
in its travail of pain ! How men have builded them- 
selves homes and beautiful cities, but neither the 
walls of their homes nor the gates of their cities 
have been able to keep this monster from entering 
and racking their bodies and making their lives 
one long succession of groans. Pain is ever present 
with the human race, one of its most implacable 
foes. 

Standing near a cross upon which a criminal has 
just been executed, we might gaze into his face and 
observe how he deports himself in this fearful 
ordeal. He may whine and beg piteously, as some 
fawning terrier might whine under its master's lash. 
He might groan and writhe and contort his muscles 
with unnamable agony, as a martyr being burned 
might groan and writhe. Or he might suffer 



GLORY OF THE CROSS 



161 



silently with hard, hot eyes, no tear coming to cool 
his cheek or soothe his soul with its own balm. Or 
he might weep and moan as some woman whose 
only child has died. But whatever might be the ex- 
pressions that sweep over his face, whatever might 
be the manifestations of that which he feels, I 
doubt not the first thing that we should think of 
would be how terrible must be the pain. It was not 
otherwise with the divine sufferer on the cross of 
glory. Pain there wrenched from Him groans and 
cries of agony and almost of despair; and yet those 
very cries, those very groans, that very shed blood, 
those very tears, are the symbol to us of the con- 
quering of pain. If one has surrendered himself to 
this pain purely for the good of others, if one has 
voluntarily suffered such agonies as these in order 
that he might be a help to his fellow-beings, then is 
pain in a measure conquered; and he who suffers the 
smaller pain, looking upon the great sufferer, says, 
" O thou who didst bear that pain for me, help me 
that I may bear this. My suffering otherwise 
would be more grievous than could be borne." 
Hence, now this cross, which was once the symbol 
of pain, represents to us the comfort and the conso- 
lation which men most need in their hours of 
suffering; and instead of being now a symbol 
of pain, it is rather a symbol of triumph over 
pain. 



162 GLORY OF THE CROSS 



Second: It was formerly a sign of shame. It 
was a disgraceful thing. It may be that the sufferer 
was some base-born being, unworthy of the name of 
man, some semi-beast. It may have been a hard- 
hearted wretch who waylaid travelers in the desert 
places and cruelly and heartlessly robbed them of 
all their possessions. It may have been a murderer 
whose hands smelled of the lifeblood of some poor 
being whom he had caused to look his last upon the 
sun. Had we stood at the foot of his cross and 
looked up at him our next thought after that of the 
terrific pain that he must suffer would be this: 
" What shame ! What disgrace ! What degrada- 
tion ! " Why, men permit even the very dogs on the 
streets, that snarl and growl ferociously, to go un- 
molested; but this man is lower than a dog, and 
more dangerous than a dog, for he has been judged 
worthy of this bitter death. We should think of the 
shame that would entail upon his family if he had 
any. If the parents who watched over him in his 
infancy and childhood are still alive, we should be 
willing to say that if they are in this throng of 
people who witness his death to-day they are in 
the outskirts of the crowd, hiding perhaps behind 
yonder knoll, or peering from yonder clump of 
bushes, their very faces written over with the shame 
that they feel. Had he a wife and child? Surely 
that woman who should be honored by him is now 



GLORY OF THE CROSS 163 



in the darkness of her own room weeping bitter 
tears into her pillow while the children wail piteously 
about her. O the shame of such a death! The 
cross is the symbol of his shame. Can I glory 
in such a symbol? I can glory in it because 
it is no longer the emblem to men of degradation 
and shame. It is rather now the emblem of purity 
and of the world's cleansed life. 

Bring this emblem that once stood for shame into 
the streets where shame now walks unabashed, and 
no sooner do the denizens catch a glimpse of this 
former shameful thing than their faces, all unused 
to blushes, begin to burn ; and their lives appear in 
all their hideous blackness, and in all their mon- 
strous impurity, in the presence of this thing that 
was once so impure and so shameful. And this is 
another reason why we can and do glory in the 
cross. That it is an enemy to shame, that it lifts 
the degraded, that it wipes the smirch from the 
brow, it takes the obloquy from the name, and it 
makes the sinful one, so stained with his sin, honor- 
able and pure in the sight of all men. 

Third : It was a sign of guilt. That man hang- 
ing on the cross you would say is suffering pain. 
He is suffering it under most shameful conditions, 
but alas, he suffers it justly. Surely he would not be 
there were it not for his guilt. Surely he would 



164 GLORY OF THE CROSS 



not be the spectacle for this jeering and hooting 
populace were it not that he has committed some 
outrageous crime. Whatever may be our senti- 
ments of humanity, however lovingly and peaceably 
inclined we may be, there comes to us, when we 
read of the punishment of some great criminal, a 
terrible sense of the awful justice of his punishment. 
We may differ as to the right of the state to inflict 
capital punishment, but differ or not, we all feel 
when a murderer has been punished according to the 
laws of his state that it was not with malevolence 
or hatred that this thing has been done, but that in 
the currents of the courts human justice, which is a 
faint symbol of Divine justice, has been meted out. 
And so this cross was a symbol and punishment 
for guilt. But that sufferer, who by dying upon it 
wrought it from a thing of shame to a thing of 
glory, that beautiful sufferer whose very tears have 
been the balm of the ages, was a guiltless man. 
There was no spot of sin in his life. There 
was no taint of guilt about him. His hands 
were innocent of his neighbors' goods and his 
brother's blood. Even the accusations that were 
brought against him were untrue, but had they been 
true they in themselves would not have constituted 
guilt in the eyes of modern times. Wherefore from 
the day on which he was elevated to this cross to 
this present moment it is no longer a sign of guilt, 



GLORY OF THE CROSS 165 

but rather a sign of guiltlessness. It stands as a 
warning hand, it is true, to show that the wrath 
of the law may be executed upon him who disobeys 
the law, but rather is it read in this light to say: 
" Though the wrath of the law may be executed 
upon him who breaks the law, still this emblem that 
once meant guilt now for you may mean guiltless- 
ness. Through Him who suffered here you may be 
rescued from suffering the penalty of your sins, and 
your guilt may be taken away." 

Fourth: It was a symbol of man's implacable 
hatred. Now it is a symbol of God's unfathom- 
able love. Could human cruelty devise anything 
worse than nailing one to a cross? Could Divine 
love devise anything better than rescuing man 
from his lost state? This symbol of man's 
hatred has now in this way become man's great- 
est blessing through the love of God. In this 
sense the Apostle gloried more than in the others, or 
rather he gloried more because this includes the 
others. He catches a vision of a humanity blasted. 
He catches a vision of civilization crumbling, a 
vision of a setting sun with a hopeless night to 
ensue; and lo! when he looks again, through the 
rifts of this cross he sees a vision in a new light. 
Civilizations are born afresh, nations are renovated 
and given new life, and the sun that was about to 



166 GLORY OF THE CROSS 

sink is seen to be rising higher in the skies, and no 
night is impending, but rather day is coming. He 
glories in the cross of Christ because it means the 
pardon of men and their reconciliation to God. He 
glories in the cross of Christ because it means that 
when he himself has run his own course he shall be 
received into the presence of Him who counted not 
the shame and the pain, but despised them, and is 
now set down at the right hand of the throne of 
God. He glories in the cross of Christ because it 
can be given to the poorest and the lowliest as well 
as to the highest and the mightiest; and all who 
accept it, accept it to their soul's salvation, and to 
their eternal glory. This emblem, then, that once 
meant shame, guilt, pain and death, now has come 
to mean purity, innocency, health and life; and for 
it a million voices sing to-day, " In the cross of 
Christ I glory." 

Now, my brother, my friend, what is your rela- 
tion to this cross and its glory? Is it one of indif- 
ference? Does that vast tragedy mean nothing to 
you ? Have the groans reached across the centuries 
to no avail ? Are you among the idle spectators who 
look upon the crucifixion and go about their daily 
business and straightway forget what they have 
seen? Does it leave no impress upon your life and 
upon your character ? I say to you to-day you can- 



GLORY OF THE CROSS 167 



not afford to be indifferent to this most tremendous 
fact in the history of the world. 

But what is your relation, my friend, my brother? 
Is it one of aversion ? Are you antagonistic ? Are 
you among those who jeer and wag their heads and 
say, " Aha ! and aha " ? Are you among the scoffers 
who cry, " He saved others ; himself he cannot 
save " ? Are the huge, sinister arms of that cross, 
which have thrown their shadow athwart the world, 
cause for jesting and for blasphemy? I say to 
you, if your attitude is one of aversion and antag- 
onism, you will certainly be crushed beneath the 
weight of this same cross. 

But what is your attitude? Is it one of glorying? 
Do you feel the mighty loveliness, the eternal 
beauty, that rests like the shining diadem of God 
upon its rugged form? Is it to you the most ap- 
pealing of figures ? Is it to you the most sacred of 
symbols ? Is it to you the emblem of the history of 
redemption? Is it a token to you of that fact that 
your Saviour and your Lord there reigned as a king, 
high seated upon His throne, and there continues to 
reign, that very cross now having become a greater 
throne than any on which ever earthly monarch 
sat? 

Look at that cross to-day. Who does not thrill 
with love, who is not struck with conviction as he 
gazes upon that which has so moved the world ? It 



168 GLORY OF THE CROSS 

stands crowning earth now as it stood in Judea's 
day crowning bare Calvary's stone-hard brow. One 
arm of this same cross I fancy points to the east, 
whence rise the sun and stars, and seems to say, 
" To you, O sons of men, who have long sat in the 
shadows, I bring light." Its other arm, I fancy, 
points to the west, where fades the day after set of 
sun, and seems to say : " I carry light into the land 
of shadows and I make the night to disappear." It 
looks, I fancy, into the south as though to say: 
" No tropical bowers, heavy with bloom and fruit- 
age, are so lovely as the Eden of my vision, toward 
which I point the sons of men." And its back, I 
fancy, is turned toward the cold and darkness of the 
dreary north as if to proclaim : " My warmth shall 
melt earth's frozen heart so that winter shall cease 
and the songs of doves shall be heard in the land." 

O Calvary, O glorious mount, around which His- 
tory has woven deeper spells and greater charms 
than she has woven around yon shattered Forum, 
or those broken columns of wind-swept Acropo- 
lis, or even of the piled stones of the pyramids lift- 
ing their changeless figures to Egyptian skies ! 

O cross on Calvary ! Poesy has begarlanded thee 
with rarer beauties than ever earth's fairest queens 
have worn. Awful and hideous though thy shape 
once was, it has become to men emblematic of 



GLORY OF THE CROSS 169 



celestial beauty. Thou art pressed by prattling in- 
fant lips, and thy beauty is kissed by the bride at 
life's orange-flowered door. Old men have hugged 
thee to their bosoms with trembling hands, and 
dying eyes have gazed upon thee as the soul has 
passed into the mystery of mysteries. Thou hast 
given earth's temples a new form and a new mean- 
ing, and thou hast added glory to the very altars of 
God most high. And the luster of thy glory shall 
never grow dim. Age after age shall roll over thee, 
but brighter and brighter shalt thou shine until thou 
shinest in the perfect day. 

O cross of Christ, " joy of the comfortless, light 
of the straying, hope of the penitent," thou hast 
seen nations rise and decay. Thou towerest over 
these wrecks of time. Thou wilt see others come 
and others go, for in accents yet unknown and in 
ages yet unborn men shall hymn thy beauty and 
look upon thy loveliness through repentant tears 
and cry, " God forbid that we should glory, save 
in the cross ! " 



XV 



THE PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 
BETWEEN JESUS AND YOUTH 

"X love them that love me; and those that seek me early 
shall find me." — Prov. 8 : 17. 

JESUS died when about thirty-three. He was 
never an old man. He is the embodiment and 
the eternal symbol of immortal youth. Bul- 
wer-Lytton, in " Zanoni," has drawn for us 
Mejnour, an embodiment of immortal advanced 
years, and also Zanoni, an embodiment of immor- 
tality in youth. The great novelist probably had in 
mind a more or less symbolic representation of God 
the Father and God the Son, with perhaps a hint 
at the Holy Spirit in the spirit of Science, which 
brooded over the lives of these characters. 

Representations in early Christian art and in me- 
dieval art and literature, and even in the literature 
and art of modern times, have pictured God as of 
advanced years: a stately and benign Jove, with 
flowing, snowy hair and beard. Life is so essen- 
tially youth, the day so essentially morning, 
the meaning of the year is so bound up in 

170 



PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 171 



the spring, the human race with all its destinies, 
all its immortal longings and all its mighty 
forces, is so embodied in childhood and youth that 
one is led to believe, that behind all this beginning- 
to-be, all this birth, this seedtime, this generating, 
— that the power behind it all is the power of eternal 
youth. Wherefore, let us banish from our minds 
the thought of God as an old man, whose sorrows 
and troubles have whitened His head, and let us 
think of God, even God the Father, as we think 
of Jesus, His Divine Son, as always young, always 
beautiful. Certainly this harmonizes better with the 
exalted conception of God which Jesus Himself 
taught by His own life and by His words. He 
seems to have been a foe to growing old. His 
terminology, His way of thinking, the expressions 
of His life, — all these things were those of glorified 
youth raised to the ultimate power, and if there 
was any object or being found on this earth which 
Jesus reverenced, it was a little child. 

And this is reasonable when we stop to consider : 
He was here to make the world over. It was an 
old world, it must be made new; it was a tired 
world, it must be given rest; it was a sorrowing 
world, it must be made to rejoice; it was a dark 
world, the light must be given to it; it was a dying 
world, it must have life, and have it abundantly; 
it was a world filled with men and women who were 



172 PREE STABLISHED HARMONY 



growing old in spirit as well as old in body: the 
gashes cut into their countenances by envious time 
had sunk deeper than the face and were furrows 
in the soul. Wherefore. Jesus came to remake 
aging and age-laden man, to give him again the 
soul of youth. 

What a startling statement that zve must be bom 
again! Bearded men. scholarly men, warlike men! 
Women with their children about them, grand- 
mothers beaming gentle smiles upon the heads of a 
younger generation, — "' Ye must be born again." 
Surely this man is mad, surely he is a paidomaniac! 
Can a man be born when he is old? Again, when 
the question is asked, " Who is greatest in the king- 
dom of heaven? " He takes a little child, one per- 
haps with the large, lustrous eyes of the East, and 
setting him in the midst of the disciples, says : 
" Verily I say unto you. Except ye be converted, and 
become as little children, ye shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven." Once more, when mothers 
and fathers were bringing their little children that 
He might touch them, the disciples were about to 
interfere, saying. " The Master has no time for 
these infants." But Jesus caught the word, re- 
buked the disciples indignantly, and said. 11 Suffer 
the little children to come unto me. and forbid them 
not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I 
say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the king- 



PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 173 



dom of God as a little child, he shall not enter 
therein." 

There is a preestablished harmony between Jesus 
the Saviour and ideal youth. Because of this pre- 
established harmony, the time for approach to Jesus 
is essentially in youth. May we let the " wisdom " 
of the Proverb be the Jesus of the New Testament, 
and proceed upon the thought, " I (Jesus) love them 
that love me, and those that seek me early shall 
find me." 

We speak partly in reply to an oft-urged fact 
that of those who come to Jesus the great majority 
come in their early, tenderer years. Aside from the 
further fact that this is no more a sign of weakness 
on the part of the young than it would be to say that 
a majority of those who decide to enter the profes- 
sion of law, to take up banking or farming, or any 
other occupation, make that decision in early years 
— aside from this I say, there is such a beauti- 
ful relationship subsisting between glorious youth 
as embodied in our noblest boys and girls, and im- 
mortal youth as embodied in Jesus, that this fact of 
their early coming is only what should be expected. 

Wherein lies the harmony between Jesus and 
youth? A thousand answers may be given, for 
nothing can be said of youth, of the hopes of youth, 
of its beauties, of its glories, of its successes that 
cannot be said of Jesus. 



174 PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 

The harmony between Jesus and youth is ap- 
parent in the matter of idealism. Youth is the time 
of poetry. Our young people dream their dreams. 
Before their eyes constantly dance visions of things 
that are in fact " sweetness and light." These 
dreams are noble and high. They build their castles 
in Spain. Contrary to the usual belief, those castles 
are real. Let us no longer call them mirages of the 
desert, or will-o'-the-wisps of the forest. Let us 
rather call them previsions of the eternal city, and 
beckonings of the Hand Divine. The castles are 
so real and so true that they affect character and 
make destinies. All honor and glory to the dreams 
of youth ! All honor and glory to the ideal visions 
of our early days! When we are older, and what 
the world calls wiser, we may refuse to follow such 
visions; we may cry we are realists; we may harden 
our hearts; but none the less, back in the soul's 
memory, clear and young, shine beauteous visions 
of our youth. 

What is realism? The world's so-called realistic 
stories are too often a rehearsal of the lowest, 
basest aspects of human life. Men have searched 
the gutters and the sewers for the abnormal, for 
the hideous, for the monstrous, for the depraved, 
for the soul and body burned and seared by the fires 
of hell, and have pictured these in all their revolting 
details, and have called the product realism. Such 



PREE STABLISHED HARMONY 175 



is not the food upon which the soul of youth feeds. 
Paint for it, if you please, visions of sunrise, with 
limpid clouds touched with gold. Sing for it, if you 
please, songs of love and tender lullabies. Speak 
for it words of courage, of daring, of purity. Youth 
is the time of ideals. Galahad was young. 

Now Jesus was an idealist. He was both poet 
and poetry. The years brought to Him no scorning 
of the sunrise, of the love song, and of deeds of 
glory. No coldness on the part of His neighbors 
ever made Him a misanthrope. Though deceived 
by His friends and scourged by His foes, He never 
became a cynic. The hard words that He spoke 
to the Pharisees who mocked God with the hollow 
shell of service, and the denunciation of the money- 
changers who polluted His Father's house, were not 
the actions of a misanthrope or a cynic, but the ac- 
tions of an idealist, a youth who burned with high re- 
solves kindled with fires from heaven descended. He 
denounced wrong, but ever trusted that right would 
ultimately prevail. Earth was fair, decked with the 
lilies which were clothed beyond the sumptuousness 
of Solomon in all his glory, and men were lovable, 
so much so He could die for their sins. That God 
would work wonderful deeds, was the belief of this 
idealist and poet. 

Now Jesus with this idealism appeals to the spirit 
of youth. For it is only in youth or in those who 



176 PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 



have preserved the spirit of youth that there can 
be a full response to the idealism of Jesus, the poet 
of unending morning. 

This harmony between Jesus and youth is seen in 
the matter of altruism. Youth is altruistic. Here 
and there may be a child that has been petted and 
spoiled, or who is so unfortunate by nature that 
he is selfishness incarnate. But normal youth 
loves its fellows. It gets small joy from its pleas- 
ures unless they are shared with friends. The man 
who retires from his fellow-men to live his selfish 
life, all alone, is the one in whose soul the spirit of 
youth is dead, in whom the tenderness, " the morn 
and liquid dew of youth," are parched and dried. 
Youth loves to share its joys. It loves to work 
with its hands for its fellow-beings. In the young 
people's groups of the churches, from the little 
children of the kindergarten department up through 
the various grades and societies, we find that our 
young people are never so happy as when they are 
working, even with their hands, for the betterment 
of someone else. There is a beautiful custom in 
our churches, that the children, at Christmas service, 
bring manger gifts for the less fortunate children 
at our doors. He who has watched the shining 
faces of these children as they lay their gifts on the 
altar knows that we speak the truth when we say 
that their greatest joy is in doing for someone else. 



P REE STABL ISHED HARMONY 177 

Now, Jesus was an altruist. His life was literally 
lived for others, and if His death was not for others, 
then the meaning that the church has read into it 
for nineteen centuries has been wrong. Not merely 
for friends did He live and did He die — for good 
men of all ages live and die for friends — but this 
great Altruist commended Himself to us in that 
while we were yet sinners He died for the ungodly. 
He gave His life for enemies, and for those who 
put Him to shame. Tell the hard-hearted man, un- 
trained to think of his brother's lot, and untrained 
to feel his brother's woes; tell the hard-hearted man 
in whom the generous impulses of youth are silent 
and still; tell such a one of this great unselfish life, 
and if it appeal to him at all it will be as it was to 
Heinrich Heine, who lamented the tragedy of the 
world trampling on the heart of another fool. 

This harmony between Jesus and youth in the 
matter of altruism makes youth essentially the time 
when Jesus calls with His strongest appeal. The 
generous boundings of the youthful heart still beat 
high at the mention of unselfish, heroic, altruistic 
deeds; and youth feels now as youth has ever 
felt since that shining figure went back to 
God, that unselfishness and heroism and altruism 
never reached so sublime a manifestation in any 
other as in Jesus of Nazareth. 

This matter of harmony between Jesus and youth 



178 PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 



is manifested in the matter of enthusiasm and hope- 
fulness. We combine these because an enthusiasm 
that does not continue to hope will sicken and die. 
Our children espouse great causes. It is a mistake 
to say they espouse them ignorantly and blindly. 
The Children's Crusades of the Middle Ages have 
been treated from every conceivable standpoint. 
They have been called " the blunder and the tragedy 
of the centuries." Viewed in one light " they were 
a slaughter of the innocent on a large scale, belong- 
ing to the mysteries of Providence which the future 
only will solve." But there is another way in 
which the crusades of these children may be looked 
upon, and that is, to remember, as their young leader 
said, " They went to God, and sought the Holy 
Cross beyond the sea." As Charles Kingsley has 
sung: 

" The rich east blooms fragrant before us, 
All fairyland beckons us forth ; 
We must follow the crane in her flight o'er the main, 
From the posts and the moors of the north." 

It is the call of a great cause to which youth 
responds, and tragic as is the story of these Chil- 
dren's Crusades, they illustrate how prone is youth 
to espouse the highest cause. Youth dreams earth's 
dreams and undertakes earth's hardest tasks. Its 
buoyant spirit knows no obstacle and recognizes no 
barrier. Youth levels mountains and fills valleys. 



PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 179 

Youth turns rivers from their channels and makes 
seas open that it may pass through dry-shod. Youth 
espouses all great causes and merges itself in every 
tide that sweeps away the wreckage of the past. 
Youth marches in our temperance parades. Youth 
rises like the storm-cloud, sudden, terrible, when 
its native land is invaded. Youth fights earth's 
battles, builds earth's cities, conquers earth's forests, 
tills earth's fields, paints earth's fairest pictures. 
Youth sings the world's undying songs. Youth 
dreams out cathedral spires and tops the churches 
of the living God with chiseled visions which cut 
the clouds, soothing the surging world with marble 
music. Age may hesitate, but youth plunges into 
the fray; age may sit by the fire and doze, but 
youth clasps hands with the sublime Youth of 
Nazareth and goes forth with faith, hope, and 
love to conquer and save the world. 

Is not this the story of Jesus? His enthusiasm, 
illumined with deathless hope, could not be de- 
stroyed. He came to fight battles against thrones, 
principalities, powers; against the very forces of 
darkness, against shame with her unblushing ef- 
frontery; against red-handed sin, against hungry 
death, against the yawning grave. Shame flaunted 
itself before His very eyes, and while He lived 
and fought for purity, Caesars danced, nude and 
intoxicated, in the presence of harlots and de- 



180 PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 



bauchees. But Jesus' enthusiasm in the battle never 
waned. Sin built its fire about Him, but His gar- 
ments were unscorched. His hope like His youth 
was immortal. Death rose to terrorize Him, but the 
Stygian blackness of night did not destroy the light 
of His spirit. The grave opened its maw and re- 
ceived Him, but He arose from that grave with 
unchanged enthusiasm and undimmed hope. 

Youth then is essentially the time for appeal, the 
time when the heart, beating with high hopes, will 
respond to the hopeful enthusiasm of that Jesus 
who, with the sea of death about to cover Him, 
cried out, " I have overcome the world.'* 

Boy, girl, youth, maiden, young man, young 
woman, older men and women in whom the spirit 
of youth still lives, there is this harmony still ex- 
isting between you and Jesus, the embodiment of 
immortal youth. If you and I find ourselves in 
harmony with Him, we, too, shall enter into the in- 
heritance of the sons of God, and upon us shall be 
placed the amaranthine crown of glorious im- 
mortality. 



Printed in the United States of America 



ESSAYS, STUDIES, ADDRESSES 



PROF, HUGH BLACK 

The New World 

i6mo, cloth, net $1.00. 

"The old order changeth, bringing in the new." To a re- 
Tiew of our changing world — religious, scientific, social — Hugh 
Black brings that interpretative skill and keen insight which 
distinguishes all his writings and thinking. Especially does he 
face the problem of the present-day unsettlement and unrest 
in religious beliefs with sanity and courage, furnishing in this, 
as in other aspects of his enquiry, a new viewpoint and clari- 
fied outlook. 

S. D. GORDON 

Quiet Talks on John's Gospel 

As Presented in the Gospel of John. Cloth, net 75c. 

Mr. Gordon halts his reader here and there, at some pre- 
cious text, some outstanding instance of God's tenderness, 
much as a traveller lingers for refreshment at a wayside 
spring, and bids us hearken as God's wooing note is heard 
pleading for consecrated service. An enheartening book, and 
a restful. A book of the winning Voice, of outstretched 
Hands. 

ROBERT F. HORTON, P.P. 

The Springs of Joy and Other Addresses 

l2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 

"Scholarly, reverent, penetrating, human. The product of 
a mature mind and of a genuine and sustained religious ex- 

Eerience. The message of a thinker and a saint, which will 
b found to be very helpful." — Christian Intelligencer. 

BISHOP WALTER R. LAMBUTH 

Winning the World for Chrisft 

A Study of Dynamics. Cole Lectures for 1915. 
l2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 

This lecture- Course is a spirited contribution to the dy- 
namics of Missions. It presents a study of the sources of in- 
spiration and power in the lives of missionaries, native and 
foreign, who with supreme abandon gave themselves utterly 
to the work to which they were called. 

FREDERICK F. SHANNON, P.P. 

The New Personality and Other Sermons 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 

Mr. Shannon, pastor of the Reformed Church on the 
Heights, Brooklyn, is possessed of lofty ideals, is purpose- 
ful, more than ordinarily eloquent and has the undoubted 
gifts of felicitous and epigrammatic expression. This new vol- 
ume by the popular preacher is a contribution of distinct value 
io current germonic literature. 



ESSAYS AND STUDIES 



JOSEPH FOR T NEWTON Author of " The Eternal 

———————————— Christ, ' ' ' 'David. Swing 1 1 

What Have the Saints to Teach Us? 

A Message from the Church of the Past to the 
Church of To-day. i2mo, cloth, net 50c. 

"Of that profounder life of faith and prayer and vision 
■which issues in deeds of daring excellence, the Pilgrims of 
the Mystic Way are the leaders and guides; and there is 
much in our time which invites their leadership." — Preface. 

JOHN BALCOM SHAW, P.P. 

The Angel in the Sun 

Glimpses of the Light Eternal. Cloth, net $1.00. 

Dr. Shaw has prepared a series of spirited addresses 
marked throughout by sincerity and fine feeling, and free 
of all philosophical surmise, or theological cavii. "The Angel 
In The Sun" is a refreshing and enheartening book; the 
cheery word of a man of unswerving faith to his compan- 
ions by the way. 

PHILIP MAURO 

Looking for the Saviour 

I2m6, cloth, net 35c; paper, 20c 

The first part of this little volume is devoted to an exami- 
nation of the chief reasons that have been advanced in sup- 
port of the post-tribulation view of the Rapture of the Saints. 
The second part contains some affirmative teaching relating 
to the general subject of the lord's return. 

PROF. LEE R. SCARBOROUGH 

Recruits for World Conquests 

i2mo, cloth, net 75c 

"Here is a soul-stirring message, presenting the call and the 
need and the response we should make. The author is deeply 
spiritual, wise, earnest and conservative in presenting his ap- 
peal. — Word and Way. 

PRINCIPAL ALEXANPER WHYTE, P. P. 

Thirteen Appreciations 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.50. 

Appreciations of Santa Teresa, Jacob Boehme, Bishop An- 
drews, Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Shepard, Thomas Good- 
win, Sir Thomas Browne, William Law, James Fraser of 
Brea, Bishop Butler, Cardinal Newman, William Guthrie and 
John Wesley, go to the making of Dr. Whyte's new book, a 
work of high authority, revealing on every page the man who 
wrote it. 



DEVOTIONAL 

.. 1 I I ■ I ■ ^ * IB ft I , ., =====3=3 

JOHN HENRY JOWETT 

My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year 
i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 

A series of choice, tabloid talks — a spiritual meditation 
for every day in the year. Dr. Jowett points every word of 
these brief expositions so that it tells, while the lessons he 
seeks to convey are so propounded as to enter the under- 
standing of his readers along a pathway of light. The whole 
volume is of true mintage, bearing the impress of Dr. Jowett's 
ripest thought and fruitful mind. 

S. D. GORDON 

Quiet Talks About the Crowned Chrisft 

i2mo, cloth, net 75c. 

After many years' study of the one book of the Bible 
devoted to the subject of the crowned Christ — the Revelation 
of John — Mr. Gordon has put these latest talks together. No 
book of the sixty-six has seemed so much like a riddle, and 
set so many guessing. Mr. Gordon, however, holds the deep 
conviction that it is wholly a practical book, and concerned 
wholly with our practical daily lives, 

F. B. MEYER, B.A. 

My Daily Prayer 

A Short Supplication for Every Day in the Year. 
32mo, leather, net 35c ; cloth, net 25c. 

"This is a tiny volume, in the 'Yet Another Day' series, 
and contains a brief prayer for each day in the year. Some 
of the petitions contain only one sentence, but each one is 
simple, pertinent, and helpful." — Zion's Herald. 

GEORGE MATHESON 

Day Unto Day 

A Brief Prayer for Every Day. New Edition. 
i6mo, cloth, net 50c. 

These choice prayers will be valued by the Christian 
world for the stimulus, inspiration, and wide spiritual out- 
look which have made the memory of their author a cher- 
ished possession. 

HENRY WARD BEECHER 

A Book of Public Prayer 

i2mo, cloth, net 75c. 

»"A distinct addition to our devotional literature. It is good 
for private reading; but would be especially valuable for 
ministers as an aid to the difficult, but immensely important, 
service of voicing the petitions of a congregation in public 
prayer." — Standard. 



PRACTICAL RELIGION-CHURCH HISTORY 



HAROLD BEGBIE Author of " Twice-Born Men" 

The Proof of God 

A Dialogue With Two Letters. i2mo, cloth, net 75c. 

The author of "Twice-Born Men" here enters a new field 
of thought. It is a most effective book — one that will be 
read and passed on to others. His method of meeting the 
agnostic and the skeptic is admirable. Here is philosophy 
presented in conversational form, pointed and convincing. 

WILLIAM J . LHAMON, D.D. Dean of Bible School Drurv 
7 College, Springfield, Mo. 

The Character Christ— Fact or Fiction? 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 

A study of the Christian Gospels, prepared and presented 
with a view to enforcing the claims of the historical Christ. 
Attention is directed to the literary presentation of the char- 
acter Christ. 

C. L. DRAWBRIDGE 

Common Objections to Christianity 

Library of Historic Theology. 8vo, cloth, net $1.50. 

An ably compiled volume dealing with almost every cur- 
rent objection to Christianity. The author writes with a 
pretty full knowledge of these objections, having, as Secre- 
tary of the Christian Evidence Society, lectured in the Lon- 
don Parks and held his own against all sorts of questioners. 

CHARLES J. SHE B BE A RE Rector of Swerford, 
" ■ Oxon, England 

Religion in an Age of Doubt 

Library of Historic Theology. 8vo, cloth, net $1.50. 

To this great problem Mr. Shebbeare addresses himself, 
claiming that with the old faith and the added insight of a 
new teaching, believers may lay the foundations of a devo- 
tional system, which furnishes a rational ground for a robust 
faith. 

W. J. SPARROW SIMPSON, P.P. 

The Catholic Conception of the Church 

Library of Historic Theology. 8vo, cloth, net $1.50. 

£Dr. Simpson's book supplies the information and assists in 
farming a right judgment: What Christ taught and did; 
what St. Paul and the Early Fathers conceived to be the 
functions of the Church; the idea of the Church in the Courr 
cil of Trent, are among the matters ably discussed. ^ 

IOHN B. RUST, D.D. 

Modernism and the Reformation 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.50. 

The aim of this able # treatise is to defend the Protestant 
Reformed faith, as against the liberalizing movement within 
the Roman Church known as Modernism. The essential 
principles of Protestanism are set forth in detail with an 
exhaustive review of the trend and methods of Modernism. 



BIBLE STUDY, DEVOTIONAL, Etc. 



A. T. ROBERTSON, P.P., LL.D. 

Studies in the New Testament 

A Handbook for Bible Classes in Sunday Schools, 
for Teacher Training Work, for use in Secondary 
Schools and Colleges. i2mo, cloth, net 50c. 

In it are no references to books of any kind outside the 
Bible. With the help of the maps and a New Testament one 
can study this work with no other books in hand. 

REV. JOSEPH T. GIBSON, P.P. 

JeSUS Christ : The Unique Revealer of God 

8vo, cloth, $1.50. 

The author has sought to see, and aid others in seeing 
Jesus Christ as He is presented in the Scriptures. He ha9 
compiled a "Iyife" neither critical nor iconoclastic, but de- 
signed for those who regard the Word of God as being not 
only the infalliable guide to faith and duty, but the authentic 
chronicle of the earthly life of our I^ord. Dr. Gibson has 
harmonized the Gospels and from them constructed a graphic 
narrative which, contrives, to re-limn an old picture with 
freshness and charm. 

REV. GEO. H. YO U NG, M. A., Ass't Prof. Rhetoric and Publh 
— — — — — — — — — — — — Speaking, Colgate University 

The Illustrative Teachings of Jesus 

The Parables, Similies and Metaphors of Christ. 
X2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 

"A most readable and practical treatment of the methods 
of the Master for the general Bible student and Christian 
worker. A valuable contribution to one's conception of Jesus 
as the 'Teacher come from God,' and revealing in life, con- 
tent of instruction and method of presentation the will of 
the Father." — Review and Expositor. 

W. BEATTY JENNINGS, P.P. 

The Social Teachings of Christ Jesus 

A Manual for Bible Classes, Christian Associa- 
tions, Social Study Groups, etc. i6mo, cloth, net 50c. 

In a series of twenty studies, the teachings of Jesus are ap- 
plied to specific social sins and needs of to-day, such as poverty, 
pleasure, war, the drink traffic, etc., and shown to be the sure 
and only solution of the problems of society. 

ROBERT FREEMAN 

The Hour of Prayer 

Helps to Devotion When Absent from Church. 
l2mo, cloth, net 75c. 

"A volume of reverent purpose designed especially for 
those who wish some form of Sunday observance, or who, by 
stress of circumstances, are prevented from attending serv- 
ices in the churches. To shut-ins, mothers with young chil- 
dren, nurses and others who are unable to attend public wor- 
ship, the book will particularly appeal." — Buffalo Express, 



SERMONS—LECTURES— ADDRESSES 



JAMES L. GORDON, P.P. 

All's Love Yet All's Law 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 

"Discloses the secret of Dr. Gordon's eloquence— fresh, 
and intimate presentations of truth which always keep close 
to reality. Dr. Gordon also seems to have the world's litera- 
ture at his command. A few of the titles will give an idea 
of the scope of his preaching. 'The Law of Truth: The 
Science of Universal Relationships'; 'The Law of Inspiration: 
The Vitalizing Power of Truth'; 'The Law of Vibration'; 
'The Law of Beauty: The Spiritualizing Power of Thought'; 
The Soul's Guarantee of Immortality." — Christian Work. 
BISHOP IRANCIS J. McCONNELL Cole Lectures 

Personal Christianity 

Instruments and Ends in the Kingdom of God. 
i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 

The latest volume of the famous "Cole Lectures" delivered 
at Vanderbilt University. The subjects are: I. The Per- 
sonal in Christianity. II. The Instrumental in Christianity. 
III. The Mastery of World- Views. IV. The Invigoration 
of Morality. V. The Control of Social Advance. VI. 
"Every Kindred, and People, and Tongue." 
NEWELL D WIGHT HILLIS, P.P. 

Lectures and Orations by Henry Ward 
Beecher 

Collected by Newell Dwight Hillis. i2mo, net $1.20. 

It is fitting that one who is noted for the grace, finish and 
eloquence of his own addresses should choose those of his 
predecessor which he deems worthy to be preserved in a 
bound volume as the most desirable, the most characteristic 
and the most dynamic utterances of America's greatest pulpit 
orator. 

W. L. W ATKINSON^ P.P. 

The Moral Paradoxes of St. Paul 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 

"These sermons are marked, even to greater degree than 
is usual with their talented preacher, by clearness, force and 
illustrative aptness. He penetrates unerringly to the heart 
of Paul's paradoxical settings forth of great truths, and il- 
lumines them with pointed comment and telling illustration. 
The sermons while thoroughly practical are garbed in strik- 
ing and eloquent sentences, terse, nervous, attention-com- 
pelling." — Christian World. 

LEN G. BROUGHTON, P.P. 

The Prodigal and Others 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 

"The discourses are vital, bright, interesting and helpful. 
It makes a preacher feel like preaching once more on this 
exhaustless parable, and will prove helpful to all young people 
— and older ones, too. Dr. Broughton does not hesitate to 
make his utterances striking and entertaining by the intro- 
duction of numerous appropriate and homely stories and illus- 
trations. He reaches the heart." — Review and Expositor, 



I 





Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Tnomson Par* Drive 
CraptefTy Township, PA 16066 
(724)773-2111 



